Satellites falling: 'Space dust' responsible?
New research by Stanford aeronautics and astronautics Assistant Professor Sigrid Close suggests she is on track to solve a mystery that has long bedevilled space exploration: Why do satellites fail?
It is popularly imagined that satellites are imperilled by impacts from "space junk" - particles of man-made debris the size of a pea that litter the Earth's upper atmosphere - or by large meteoroids like the one that recently exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia.
Although such impacts are a serious concern, most satellites that have died in space haven't been knocked out by them. Something else has killed them.
Researchers say the likely culprit, it turns out, is material so tiny its nickname is "space dust."
These natural micro-meteoroids are not directly causing satellites harm. When they hit an object in space, however, they are travelling so fast that they turn into a quasi-neutral gas of ions and electrons known as plasma.
That plasma, Close theorises, has the potential to create a radio signal that can damage, and even completely shut down, the satellites they hit.
The signal is an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP – similar in concept but not in size to what is generated by nuclear detonations.
A massive EMP recently knocked out cell phones when the Chelyabinsk meteoroid hit, the report said.
"Spacecraft transmit a radio signal, so they can receive one that might potentially disable them," Close said.
"So our question was:
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