Relative strength of Megatons of TNT outputs

Perhaps it is stating the overly obvious, but not all space related phenomena need be observed at night. This past October 8 observers imaged a high altitude fireball explosion over Indonesia sometime before mid day. The event had an estimated kinetic output of roughly 40,000 tons of TNT. That is roughly triple the energetic discharge of the Little Boy nuclear weapon deployed by the United States over Hiroshima, Japan.

There was no impact or catastrophic fallout from this Indonesian incident but there have been other similar events that have led to significant altering of the Earth’s environment. The most powerful recent occurrence was the Tunguska Event which occurred 3-6 miles over Siberia in 1908. The energy output of this event is estimated at 10-15 megatons of TNT or roughly 1/3 the power of the most powerful man made nuclear explosion, the 50 megaton Russian hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba. To keep things in perspective, and our egos in check, when a star goes supernova it releases something like 10 octillion or 10²⁸ megatons of TNT. These are nuclear energies we can barely comprehend, let alone engineer.

The first recorded professional expedition to the Tunguska site did not arrive until more than 10 years later due to its remote location and the war torn nature of Russia at the time. The witnesses observed no impact crater and 30 miles of scorched trees knocked down from a central location. Hypotheses for this event range from the feasible large meteoric air burst to a traveling black hole to a crash landed alien UFO. As there are no reliable eye-witness accounts we must rely on the most plausible scientific inference of a meteoric air burst event over which we have no control. These types of powerful atmospheric events occur all too frequently as we go about our insulated and self important lives. Observations like these serve to remind those of us that might marvel at humanity’s mastery over nature and other men that we are far more passive in relation to the greater cosmic energy pathways.

Many times astronomy involves being aware of and tracking local phenomena like weather patterns and the increasingly crowded beltway of low orbit man made satellites. Last summer as I spent time inside the dome at the Gunnison Valley Observatory peering through the open hydraulic doors at the night sky I frequently happened to catch the reflected light of a satellite in motion. This happened in spite of my poetic delusion that our more removed atmosphere was less cluttered by man made technology than our terrestrial domain.

At this time orbiting the Earth there are roughly 13,000 objects being tracked ranging in size from a screwdriver to the International Space Station (ISS). A few weeks ago there was an unexpected smashup between a functioning satellite and a defunct Russian Ministry of Defense satellite over Siberia. As a result we now have countless debris swirling around in a highly radical fashion making it difficult to track. This difficulty could spell trouble for the potential of more inter-satellite collisions, available space launch windows and for safe travel of mankind to and from destinations like the ISS, the Moon and beyond. As the second wave of the space race heats up and new national competitors in space exploration enter the stage it is only going to become more of a ‘fuster cluck’ up above.

Space Debris courtesy of NASA

High density technology in motion is bound to collide as the automobile has effectively proven over the last century here on Earth. In January 2007 China launched a rocket that destroyed one of its own weather satellites and generated more than 2400 new items in an orbital spectrum from 300 to 2500 miles. China also recently smashed a satellite into the Moon in a highly erratic fashion. As China is new in the realm of space programming and experience I’m inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they simply don’t know what they are doing and are literally fumbling about in the dark. It does, however, pose a hazard to the international community and leaves me pondering the ethical rhetoric that just because we can use technology for particular ends does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that we should make use of that technology. Still, like a child appreciates the rainbows in an oil slick, I can appreciate the tracks of all kinds of objects moving through the crystalline Gunnison Valley night skies.