[FPSPACE] Correction: Fengyun-1C debris figures

[Keith Gottschalk]

Dear FPSPACE-rs,

        Around a week ago I had, typing from memory as FPSPACE is not
an accredited academic journal, claimed that a US govt rep had given the
figure of either 13 000 or 17 000 trackable pieces of debris from
China's blowing up of its Fengyun - 1C. I then got off-forum a query
about that figure. 

      With my workload, & commuting across the gridlocked streets of
Cape Town, it was only yesterday that I could get from my university to
the Observatory HQ during office hours to meet up again with the
astronomer, & try to check the source he showed me. Well, I discovered
that my aging memory was slipping again. While the astronomer couldn't
find the printout that he had showed me a week back, he did trace his
original copy on his laptop.

      The US ambassador had in fact said that the Chinese had left 2
600 pieces of orbiting debris large enough to be tracked, and a computer
extrapolation indicated that there will be a further 100 000 pieces too
small to be tracked.

    The astronomer also showed me a hardcopy of a NASA powerpoint
presentation to COPUOS (Vienna) in Feb this year, where the 11th slide
gave "USA space surveillance network is currently tracking more than
2500 debris pieces", plus an "assessed" number of pieces larger than 1
cm. as around 125 000.

    Which is in good agreement with the ambassador's figures, bearing
in mind that data can be revised weekly. So let me please place this
correction here, in case my earlier posting starts drifting off-station
through the internet!

yours, Keith
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