Meteor shower threatens artificial satellites

Artificial satellites such as the International Space Station and Hubble telescope can be damaged by a meteor shower next year.

Artwork: gadgetcrave.com.

The US Aerospace Agency (NASA) said the Draconids meteor shower moved through Earth's orbit in October every year. According to the Telegraph, humans will have the opportunity to witness the strongest Draconids meteor shower in over a decade in October. That meteor shower will last 7 hours, creating countless beautiful streaks of light as they plunge into the Earth's atmosphere. According to a NASA calculation, we can see several hundred meteors every hour from October 8, 2011.

That's good news for astronomers, but it makes NASA scientists worried. They think dust in a meteor shower could destroy artificial satellites. So NASA is studying the ability of the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope to change the trajectory of flight so that they can get to safety when meteor shower takes place.

However, many other artificial satellites will be hard to avoid meteor shower. They provide important services such as telecommunications, weather forecasts, television, remote sensing. In addition to direct damage from dust collisions, the satellite electronic devices may stop working due to electrostatic discharge from dust.

Every year the number of supernovae in the Draconids meteor shower is relatively low. But after about 13 years the number increased very strong because the earth moved through the area with the most dense dust particle density in the Draconids meteor shower. In 1933, people on Earth could see 54,000 meteors every hour in ideal conditions. But by 1946, that number had dropped to 10,000 meteors every hour.