[meteorite-list] Orbital debris watching radar

Darren Garrison cynapse at charter.net
Sun Feb 12 02:27:26 EST 2006


On a less argumentative subject, there is an idea I've been wondering about for
a while.  Thinking back to my wondering about what lunar meteorites do between
leaving the surface of the moon and reaching the surface of the Earth, there is
the idea that some of them enter Earth orbit and then have their orbits decay
until they fall.  Given the really fresh lunars found lately, that would seem to
imply that there could be more of them in orbit now.

So, not really a coherent question but more of a musing-- just how small an
object at what distance can the radars that constantly track orbital space
program junk around the Earth reliably track?  And would there be any way to
determine if a piece of orbiting debris was junk or an incoming lunar?



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