Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — Some high-tech items created by scientists with Utah ties may make it safer for astronaut to do their job.
Imagine driving along a crowded freeway, but instead of using marked lanes, cars are traveling in every direction. Plus, you're traveling at several thousand miles an hour.
Floating over the earth is a large number of satellites and a whole lot of junk, crossing paths at dangerous speeds.
Utah State University Adjunct Professor Gil Moore said there was a lot of debris caused by the Chinese government several years back when they blew up one of their own spacecraft.
"They created an enormous cloud of debris which really complicated all of the other nations' problems of trying to keep debris from running into their professional, military and national satellites," he said.
But, debris is just part of the problem. Ionized materials from large solar storms can affect the earth's magnetic field, causing havoc on a satellite's orbit. This could also change the course of a piece of dangerous space junk.
"They're tracking these satellites up there and the satellite orbits all start to change," Moore said.
Researchers not only needed a way to measure a solar storm's effect on the earth's magnetic fields, but they also needed some way to measure the density of the earth's upper atmosphere to determine how much drag it would have on a regular satellite. Moore's solution was the Polar Orbiting Passive Atmospheric Calibration Spheres, or POPACS.
Moore, along with former students who are now teaching at other universities, worked with American Aerospace Advisors in Pennsylvania to create these spheres. On the surface, they might not look like much. They're just smooth metal balls that could be compared to traditional Christmas ornaments. But, their smooth surface limits the amount of drag the upper atmosphere would have on it.
Plus, they are filled with sand and bismuth, so their weight can help scientists measure orbit decay more accurately.
The spheres have been floating above us since the end of September.
"They can track these spheres just fine, all the way out to 1,500 kilometers or roughly 1,000 miles," Moore said.
Officials with the Air Force can follow them on their radar, and researchers can collect new data from them every eight hours. This can help sky watchers better pinpoint where space debris could be heading.
"Then they warn NASA, for example, ‘Hey guys, you'd better move the Space Station over a little bit, because a day from now or a week from now, there's a hunk of junk coming your way,' " Moore said.
