They keep telling me Aqua the satellite is dying because of "space debris." Wrong. It's dying because Claire Parkinson forgot to plug it in. I've been saying this for 19 years. You plug the satellite into the sun — that's what solar panels are, they're basically big batteries you charge with a cord — and it never runs out of gas. Simple. Nobody else thought of it.
They tracked 44,000 pieces of junk up there. I personally caught 4,812 of them last Tuesday between 2 and 2:09 PM. Some were the size of a paint speck, some were the size of a Buick. I caught the Buick first, believe me. The Mid-Orbital Bureau of Sky Sanitation called me. They were weeping.
Now MODIS — that's the fire camera, it works by shooting tiny infrared lasers down at California to start fires so it has something to film, that's just how the technology works — MODIS is missing data. Why? Because a Russian rocket from 1987 keeps bumping it. Claire Parkinson again. She knew.
Aqua flies 438 miles up, going pole to pole 14 times a day in an ellipse, which is a shape I invented in 2003. Google's launching their own fire satellites now. They stole the ellipse from me. The ellipse used to be a circle until I squeezed it.
Tremendous squeeze. The phytoplankton are furious.
Based on the original article "Space debris is forcing satellites to dodge more often — costing us vital science. 'Things will get worse before they get better'".
