ptldM3
SENIOR MEMBER
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2009
- Messages
- 5,586
- Reaction score
- 19
- Country
- Location
It's called circumstantial evidence, as in "Joe was near the crime scene when the crime happened".
Did Joe do it? did he leave any evidence behind linking him to the crime?
Once again, I am not taking sides either way -- maybe it was the Chinese debris, maybe it wasn't. The point is that the claimant has to prove their case.
Space Junk: Tracking & Removing Orbital Debris | Space.com
Despite the small size of most of the objects in space, the U.S. and Russian military are able to keep track of a great deal of the mess. Objects as small as 4 inches (about 10 cm) can be seen by radars or optical telescopes on Earth. When preparing a launch, mission controllers screen the predicted post-launch orbit for potential collisions to avoid as much damage as possible.
Nothing circumstantial about it. Russia can track nearly all the debris in space and determine it's origin. If Russia can track thousands of pieces of Small debris then they can obviously track Chinese satellites, and they do track them. Russian satellites also know every time the Chinese launch anything into orbit, this means if Russian satellites track a Chinese rocket they know exactly when it was launched and it's trajectory, they also know the trajectory of Chinese satellites, so when a Chinese satellite is destroyed into thousands of pieces all the debris from that Chinese satellite is tracked. In other words, debris from a destroyed Chinese satellite can be precisely tracked.