Space junk risk for Hubble crew: 1 in 221
Even factoring in a recent satellite collision, a threat analysis found that the crew of space shuttle Atlantis will not face a dramatically higher risk of catastrophic damage due to space debris when it travels to the Hubble Space Telescope in May, according to NASA.
The overall risk of impact damage is higher for a mission to Hubble, which is 350 miles from Earth, than it is for a flight to the International Space Station, which orbits at a lower, less debris-choked altitude. However, the actual numbers are better than flight planners initially expected, a NASA official said Thursday.
“It’s not going to keep us on the ground,” Steve Stich, manager of the orbiter project office at the Johnson Space Center, told CBS News. “Obviously, we know we’re accepting a little higher risk for this flight. That’s why we’ve tracked it very carefully.”
Including the threat posed by debris from a satellite collision in February between a defunct Russian Cosmos satellite and an Iridium telephone relay station, the mean odds of a catastrophic impact during the Hubble mission are on the order of 1 in 221, which is below the 1-in-200 threshold that requires an executive-level decision by NASA’s leadership.
