Hi, > At the point of collision, two objects will come together with a closing > speed near that of orbital velocity. The catastrophic disruption of USA-193 > and its interceptor will produce a debris cloud spreading evenly in all > directions but, overall, still having USA-193's original orbital > characterisics. One year earlier a simple analysis of Fengyun 1C debris pattern was made. The idea was that the relative velocity distribution for debris may be represented as the sum of an average delta-V vector and a random spherically distributed component. Taking into account 517 pieces of debris being known at the moment their positions at the time of impact (22:26 UTC) were checked and 41 objects discarded with calcualted distances more than 100 km. The remaining 476 pieces had average relative velocities of (+4.8, +34.5, +51.7) m/s (in the direction of target satellite, its radius vector and to the right of the flight path correspondingly). Note: the +4.8 m/s values was calculated for only 419 fragments with deltaVv less than 100 m/s. So I think we can expect a somewhat similar pattern in the USA-193 case. Of course the relative direction of the SM-3 interceptor at the time of collision may be another leading to different components of the average delta-V vector. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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