like SpacecraftThe world’s largest and most powerful rocket is preparing to finally attempt to reach Earth’s orbit, and experts say the risk of an in-flight disaster – and a cloud of debris – “should be worrying”.
Elon Musk SpaceX The Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster are expected to launch the 14th launch system test flight and first orbital test flight later this month.
According to an aerospace expert, if the spacecraft’s upper stage explodes in orbit, it could produce debris on a larger scale than previous in-orbit incidents, including an anti-satellite missile test.
During that test, in November 2021, Russia It exploded intentionally A defunct Soviet intelligence satellite called Cosmos 1408.
Moriba Jah, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, said the Russian test had harmful consequences for the operation of the SpaceX vehicle. Starlink Satellite constellation.
He said that if the spacecraft exploded in orbit, it could create a lot of debris that could pose a danger to other objects as well as humans.
“If something like this happened in low Earth orbit, it would be like a Russian anti-satellite test, but perhaps a few orders of magnitude larger in terms of the amount of debris it would generate,” Jah said.
