Tristan wrote: "When a water dump occures, does this water vapourise immediately or does it freeze into ice particles ? If it forms ice particles, isn't that very dangerous for the ISS/Shuttle as for other satellites which are in low orbit ?" The particles freeze immediately in the cold environs of space forming ice particles. The particles are of small relative size and mass and will individually decay very quickly--within a day is a fairly good guess. There was recontact with a Shuttle from ice particles generated on a water dump many years ago. This event caused the current retrograde dump orientation that is designed to mitigate such recontact. [I want to retract a statement I made yesterday. I believe the nozzle orientation is not toward the earth, but in the retrograde direction when the dump is initiated. As the particles move away and behind the Shuttle, their small masses cause them to decay quickly at different rates proportional to the mass. Hence the 'comma' shaped cloud of particles is formed with the ones leading the Shuttle being in lower orbits]. I have not heard of any further accounts of the crew 'seeing' particles hitting the Shuttle from a water dump since that time. Paul ----------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe from SeeSat-L by sending a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@lists.satellite.eu.org http://www2.satellite.eu.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 16 2001 - 04:12:04 PDT