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India shifted launch of its Chandrayaan-3 moon lander to avoid space objects

https://spacenews.com/india-shifted-launch-of-its-chandrayaan-3-moon-lander-to-avoid-space-objects/

India shifted launch of its Chandrayaan-3 moon lander to avoid space objects The liftoff time for India’s historic Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander was shifted four seconds to avoid close approaches to other space objects.

The delay was only 4 seconds. This time. But with 30,000 trackable objects in orbit and more every day, this is going to become commonplace and the delays are going to be worse.

9 comments

AllBlue22

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I understand the sentiment but a 4 second delay is hardly a story.

NewNewAccount

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It’s four seconds this time. With more and more debris building up over time, this problem is only going to get worse.

FlyingSquid

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A 4 second delay can mean losing a launch window.

smallaubergine

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4 seconds? Usually launch windows are in hours and days right? Unless you have barely any fuel margin and you're trying to hit a very very specific orbit I can't imagine 4 seconds being a huge issue. But I'm no orbital dynamicist

FaceDeer

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It's not a huge deal, and if it were then the mission is already balanced on a knife's edge and shouldn't have been designed that way in the first place. There are plenty of technical problems that could cause a 4-second delay.

TimeSquirrel

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vacuumflower

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"30000 trackable objects in orbit" is nothing. Somebody doesn't quite understand the scale.

FaceDeer

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Why is it "going to get worse"? A 4-second delay might need to be done for launches more frequently, but I don't see why the delays would get longer than that - debris moves out of the way at the same speed regardless of how much of it there is. This doesn't seem like a big deal. If a 4-second delay risks killing your mission then you probably should have designed the mission with more leeway in its launch window to begin with. There are a huge number of technical issues that could easily cause a 4-second delay.

Of course, that doesn't result in a headline that draws clicks.

Edit: I just read the article. "It's going to get worse" doesn't appear anywhere in it. You just made that up.

FlyingSquid

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Do you think there will be less things in orbit in the future or more? Because it's less 'made that up' and more 'inferred based on what happens in reality.'

FaceDeer

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As I said, "more things in orbit" does not imply longer delays. It would mean that launches would have to delay 4 seconds more frequently, not that they would need to delay longer than 4 seconds.

If a 4 second delay is a problem then your mission is badly designed from the start since there are very many reasons you might encounter a 4 second delay.