Hacker News Reader

Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

Possibly an electrostatic discharge "crater" as distance was finally short enough to be bridged by potential, and then the second crater is the actual impact.

View on HN

Is that more plausible or probable than two small objects spread out very slightly in the tangent plane and also a bit in time? They say "the" object a lot but is that something we have the precision to know, i.e. that it was not two objects instead? What I really want to know is if static discharge of that magnitude is common? If so, that's kinda cool.

This small difference would very likely be several kilometers at least. As the article mentioned even the push from photons is relevant for determining the impact site.

One of these objects will be closer to the moon and will be affected more by its gravity and less by its own momentum. This effect increases with time and in the end will amount to a large difference.

Two objects close together would definitely have been my guess, but my orbital mechanics is too weak even for KSP.

Static build-up is a big problem in space. Finding a path to ground gets more complex when you're in orbit

That’s an interesting observation. It makes me wonder if that charge can be channeled into a system that harvests the resulting energy. Basically, solar power collection but using static charge that would otherwise accumulate throughout the object.

At the very least, I expect a system to dissipate that energy would be required, or wild and crazy things would happen when such a charge suddenly finds a path to “ground”.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com