Comment by jasonpeacock
Comment by jasonpeacock 2 days ago
> react within an hour of the maneuver being detected
I'm curious at what steps were involved took an hour. Running the calculations should be quick (computers are fast), as is transmitting commands.
This sounds like there's human in the loop that had to make decisions.
Orbital mechanics can be somewhat counterintuitive.
If you want to change the altitude of your orbit at a certain place, the most efficient place for that is generally when you're on the other side of the planet from that place.
In low earth orbit it takes about 90 minutes to go around the planet, so a small nudge 45 minutes before the potential intercept is going to be vastly more efficient than a big shove when the collision is 5 minutes away.
Starlink uses high efficiency ion thrusters so it has to do small nudges anyway..
So I would not be surprised if most of that hour is spent waiting for the right time to fire the thrusters.