Other
Scientific paper
Dec 1999
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999baas...31.1591s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS Meeting #31, late abstracts, #59.40; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 31,
Other
Scientific paper
We discuss recent results from in situ measurements of dust and space debris in the geostationary orbit. Our detector has now collected data for more than two years and during this time a large number of events have been registered. The average number of the impacts of the highest classification (where all signals agree with pre launch laboratory calibration) is 1.7 per day. There is however a strong daily variability where this number can vary from 0 to more than 30. In addition, many impacts occur clustered in time and often reappear at the same time for one or more days after their first appearance. A strikingly strong correlation has been found between the days of high impact flux (>5 per day) and the days where a launch to a geostationary orbit has taken place during the two previous days. We therefore believe that these impacts are related to the launches and possibly consist of slag particles that are known to be ejected at low relative velocities from the solid apogee boost motors that are used to circulise the transfer orbit to a geostationary orbit. These impacts, that make up about 30 and the remaining particles will consist of interplanetary particles and random debris particles. These are further separated by their velocity, assuming particles at velocities below the earth escape velocity are earth orbiting debris and the ones at higher velocities are interplanetary. Another interesting but not yet fully explained observation is the high electrical negative charge that is found on many of the particles detected. These events seem to be more common during local night time. The particles would need to be fairly large and slow to give results like these if one considers the plasma environment and the detector sensitivity.
Drolshagen Gerhard
Gruen Eberhard
Svedhem Håkan
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