Space debris

[ldkinfo]

Some time ago a Russian and U.S. collided in space increasing the amount of spcae debris in orbit. besides posing a hazard to other satellites, the additional debris can pose a hazrd to stealth aircraft because of its "radar shadow"
The U.S. and other countires can track objects in orbit as small as 5 cm by using radar. Each object has a radar signature. If a stealth aircraft corooses between the radar source and the object, the object will temporarily disappear. As objects temporarily disappear and reappear on radar, an object can be trracked because of the absence of signal(i.e. radar shadow). If objects are close enough together,an approximation of aircraft size can also be determined.
Earth orbit seems vast compared to the amount of space debris, but that is when looking at it in 3 dimensions, radar uses only two dimensions.

 

[MeteorWayne]

I'm a little unclear as to the point you are trying to make, and am therefore not sure it belongs in this forum. Can you explain more clearly what you are trying to say?

Thanx

Wayne

 

[neilsox]

You may be correct about the radar shadow, but it will typically be only one pulse that does not return as typical space debris is traveling 17,000 miles per hour and typical stealth aircraft 1000 miles per hour. There are several other reasons that pulses don't return, besides aircraft in the way. The space junk tracking radars are likely designed to ignore missing pulses, but a radar system dedicated to looking for radar shadows might work well, but will be very costly, as i think we need 5 to 10 radars working together to find a second missing pulses within about one second, so that direction of the stealth air craft can be approximated. For precise missile aiming data and high confidence, perhaps ten missing pulses are needed in the the same second. Two or more stealth aircraft in close formation would produce low confidence for the aiming data at individual stealth aircraft. It is also unknown whether the pulse was lost before or after it should have been reflected by the space debris. Weakened, instead of missing pulses, will be likely occur more often. Space junk is typically tumbling and thus produces both strong and weak reflections. Neil