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Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
I'm going to keep this short, but sweet. I have some inside info on elenin and its trajectory. NASA is worried that comet elenin will hit, (yes, physically collide with), the International Space Station (the exact phrasing was "nasa space station"). This means the official .24 au passing distance is a lie. It also explains the media silence. Most comets recieve large, global news coverage. "Haley's comet" is a household name, why not Elenin?
The incident does raise a question, however: How does the ISS change its orbit, and how quickly could it do so in an emergency?
The station is equipped with a set of 220-pound gyroscopes—stainless steel flywheels that rotate 6,600 times per minute. At least two of these are needed to produce the torque that keeps the station holding the proper attitude without having to waste propellant.
But this kind of tweaking isn't enough to push the ISS into a different orbit. For that, good old-fashioned thrust is needed.
The station has a couple of options for boosting its orbit. Every so often, while unmanned Russian Progress supply ships are docked to the station, their thrusters are fired. To move the ISS safely, Progress' eight engines pulse in a pattern that pushes their thrust evenly through the station's center of gravity.
There are times, though, when no Progress is attached. In that case, thrusters on the Russian Zvezda service module, one of the first large pieces attached to the facility in 2000, could be used. The Zvezda engines haven't been fired in six years, but a test is expected by year's end, says Jack Bacon, a systems integration engineer on the ISS program. Redundancy is part of the ISS modus operandi. "We always have a plan for a reboost," he says. "We never leave ourselves exposed."
Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by Unity_99
This comet is approaching from well "above" the plane of the ecliptic....it "aligns" with nothing.
edit on 16 April 2011 by weedwhacker because: (no reason given)
Where do you get that from?
Originally posted by Nonchalant
Heres a good animation I found showing how close we get to the comet www.curtrenz.com...
My concern is more with what do we hit in the path of the comet
Now where did i put that E.T, i could swear i put him in the closet ....
Originally posted by ZarbeMomin
for someone not into astronomy, when and where will this comet hit?
for someone not into astronomy, when and where will this comet hit?