Has the issue of what to call various kinds of orbiting debris been addressed here? (Just curious.) When my own table of earth satellites was in full swing, I was pretty careful to use the term "metal object" for a piece of nondescript hardware jettisoned during the normal launch and operation of a spacecraft, and reserved the term "fragment" specifically for an orbited object that resulted from the breakup, whether intentional or unintentional, of a spacecraft or rocket body. (Something knocked off a spacecraft by a collision would be a "fragment," too.) Of course, I tried to identify each object as best I could (as a "metal strap" or "despin weight" or "auxiliary rocket motor" or "fairing" or "garbage bag" or whatever), and used "metal object"--an old NASA term from early Goddard reports, as I recall--only if the nature of the object remained obscure. In the RAE table, I see the term "fragment" used for all kinds of debris that are not the result of on-orbit breakup, sometimes even for true satellites (e.g., the multitudinous Russian Romb radar calibration subsatellites). The term "debris" in this context, of course, denotes anything in orbit that's not an active satellite (this definition appears in an early issue of the Orbital Debris Quarterly News). So spent rocket bodies, satellites that are no longer operating, breakup fragments, metal objects, despin weights, dipole clumps, canister parts, and so forth are all "debris," and calling something "debris" is even less informative than calling it "fragment." Any thoughts on this, or should broad terms such as "metal object," "fragment," and "debris" simply be used interchangeably? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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