Houston....Do we have a problem?

[Bizibilder]

From the BBC "Track the Space shuttle" news page. A bit of a space jam??

Quote:

"The orbits above are based on calculations that predict each spacecraft's position. They are updated hourly; they are not based on radar."

Maybe they should try radar?

[Capricorn]

As radar is transmitted and bounces off the object you would only know where it was for the period that it was overhead/in view. By the time it was located it would be too late for them to announce Get outside and look, it would have passed over.

Prediction works better. You have in advance an idea of when to go look. Also would need a world wide web of radar stations to track it, not just land based.

The BBC spend our licence fee on quite a lot of junk but building radar stations to track the ISS seems a little out of their remit. I doubt that when the ISS is over China that the Chinese will be too keen on the BBC building a radar site, or two or three, there, Russia neither.