where do the rockets go when released by space ships?

Question

In all documentaries and movies I watch with space ships, they always release rockets at some points in space. Do the ships pick the rockets on their way back to earth or they are simply diposed of in outer space?

Answer 1

We just covered this in my Exploration of Space course, so let me check out my notes for you =)

If you're talking about a space shuttle (I'm not sure if you are talking about a space shuttle or another type of rocket?)

There are 4 parts of the STS (Space Transportation System) - "Space Shuttle"
-The Orbiter itself
-Fuel Tank
-Rocket Boosters (2)

3 of these 4 pieces come back to Earth and are able to be used again, and those parts are the Orbiter and the 2 Rocket Boosters.

The Rocket Boosters, which provide 80% of the STS' fuel in getting into low earth orbit detach from the STS and they fall back into Earth's oceans. They are able to control (predict) where these two rocket boosters will fall due to the fact that the shuttle is not very far above Earth at this point - it only took off a few seconds ago. Ships go out into the oceans to retrieve the rocket boosters and they are used again.

The fuel tank (provides 20% of the fuel) is the part of the STS that is expendable (irretrieveable). By the time the fuel tank is released from the STS it is too far above Earth to have a predictable landing place, and more importantly, is not equipped with the correct protection OR maneuvering units that will bring it back into Earth's atmosphere at the correct angle without burning up - so it does.

The orbiter (space shuttle - where the crew stays) has it's own boosters on the bottom that provide about 1% of the fuel, and this is called OMS (Orbital Maneuvering System). This provides the extra kick that the shuttle needs to get to orbital speed. The OMS is also used to change orbits/direction/speed. The shuttle, after staying in orbit for a couple days or weeks is brought back to Earth at an extreme precise angle as to avoid burning up in the atmosphere. It lands very much like an airplane except much steeper and much faster.

I hope I helped =)

Answer 2

Only three ways it can go:-

(A) out of earths orbit and into space, or associate with another planet or our moon (ie inevitably rockets etc that are already beyond earths gravity field, like a Mars probe etc.);

(B) Orbit the earth for a while -this can be for a short time or many years -its known as 'space junk' and becoming an ever-increasing problem. Then the orbit often decays and these things falls back to earth. Can be anything from small rockets to an astronauts lost glove (which has been photographed!);

(C) Come straight back to earth (the majority of whats released out there). Most of what returns burns up harmlessly in the atmosphere, but some bigger bits do get all the way back down to the sea or, less often, land surface.

Answer 3

i think you mainly mean the shots from the apollo moon landing days.

the parts which fell away from the ship were designed to fall back into the atmosphere and burn up on the way back down. once in orbit, some parts were released into space. over time most of these bits will fall back into the atmosphere eventualy, but it can take a very long time, hundreds of years, and the space around the earth is cluttered by thousands of pieces of debris.

Answer 4

The upper stages are abandoned in Earth or Solar orbit once their missions are complete. Some are solid fueled rockets such as the Inertial Upper Stage. Most are liquid fueled and are powered by propellants such as liquid hydrogen and oxygen, or violently reactive fuels such as nitric acid and mono-methyl hydrazine. There's hundreds of them in orbit around the Earth, many in near geosynchronous orbits and dozens are wandering around the Solar System. Others are left in low Earth orbit, where drag eventually leads to them falling into the atmosphere and burning up. Until recently, they were just left up there, but because of expended upper stages exploding because of left over propellants mixing, igniting and blowing them up, mission planners no longer do this. After releasing the spacecraft, mission controllers vent the tanks to space or fire the engine a final time to both use up the remaining fuel and get it clear of the spacecraft.

Answer 5

Rockets release stages, that fall back down to earth in the ocean or burn up in the atmosphere. They don't float away into space because a rocket releases stages before it achieves orbit.

Answer 6

Space debris, commonly known as space trash, refer to the debris left by humans in space, ranging from deserted satellites and metal components of various spacecrafts to residues and powder produced by ignition of solid fuel engines.

It is estimated that currently there are over 110,000 pieces of untracked space debris with diameters more than 1 cm in space and over 40 million pieces with diameters of more than 1 mm. The debris weighs about 3000 tons and is increasing at a rate of 2% to 5% every year.

Scientists pointed out that at this speed, nothing would be able to enter the space orbit by 2300. The observation and research of space debris aims to protect manned spaceship and expensive large satellites.

Answer 7

The last stage of the Apollo rockets crashed into the moon. They also deliberately crashed the LM ascent stages into the moon, except for one, which was sent into orbit around the sun.

Answer 8

some end up in low earth orbit and some fall back to earth, being burned up as they re-enter the atmosphere or falling into the ocean, eventually, most of the spent rockets in low earth orbit will fall back to earth as well and be vaporized on re-entry......

Answer 9

spacei sclutttered with debris of space vehicles. It is said they are in thousands. Space also needs to be cleared of debries. A catastoff is waiting to be happened to develop the technology to clear space traffic routes

Answer 10

I'm going to answer your questioin quite literally, in that you are asking about space SHIPS, meaning manned space flights.

In the Mercury and Gemenii projects of Nasa, the manned capsules were equipped with the final stage rockets of thier crafts, which were used to acheive stationary orbit, leaving the first and second stages to fall back to the earth, which occurred well within the first minute of the flight, and therefore, they fell back to earth over the Atlantic ocean, and anything that wasn't burned up in the ascent or the descent has sunk to the bottom of the atlantic ocean floor, which is why the launches took place on the coast of Florida instead of anywhere further inland, is because they knew that there would be debris from the initial stages that would be falling back to earth even on the best of space flights.

It wasn't until the Apollo missions that any of the jettisonable rocketry was still attached to the manned capsule when the whole vehicle reached stable earth orbit, and the whole purpose of the second stage was to give the boost necessary to escape earth orbit on the way towards lunar orbit. The first stage still fell back to earth and all of them are somewhere on the bottom of the Atlantic, but only the successful second stages aren't also on the bottom of the Atlantic with them. After a successful escape velocity burn, the second stage was jettisoned os as to reduce the total mass of the vehicle, and were released into whatever direction they wound up going in after all their Lox and Hydrogen propellent stopped firing. At least one of them fell back to earth and quite luckily landed in the middle of the Pacific ocean, but most are still out there, in high earth orbit.

The various missions to Skylab before its low-earth oribt decayed and the whole thing fell back to earth, and what didn't burn up in the atmosphere wound up making small but calculatable craters in Australia, were all flown up and back in left-over Gemenii and Apollo vehicles, there was nothing new there.

The Soviets, however were a different strory. The biggest reason that they failed to reach the moon first instead of their much earlier firsts, like launching Launching Sputnik, launching that poor dog that survived space but died in re-entry, and launching the first cosmonaut, they were much more safety conscious about the probability of jettisoned debris landing in some farmer's field or in some populated city.. at least that's the spin they put on it, so, all of their missions were launched into space in single stage vehicles, a few of which were actually successful in reaching the moon, unmanned, but, incapable of attaining lunar orbit and reshot back to earth, unmanned, and were trying to figure out how to remotely control their test rockets without allowing anybody else, i.e. NASA, to find a way to subvert remote control from them, when Apollo 8, 9, 10, and 11 were launched, and they lost the greatest space race.

They didn't even launch any more missions at all until NASA made a very world-wide public invitaiton for them to join in Apollo's final mission, the Apollo-Soyuz extra-terrestrial docking mission, and it was almost a begrudging effort to get them to make use of the Spare-Apollo-parts Skylab Space Station, but their endurance-record-breaking Skylab missions made world news that NASA didn't even TRY to compete with. When Skylab's orbit decayed and Skylab fell back to earth and rained scattered debris all over Australia, the Soviets responded by beginning to build MIR, the Soviet Space Station, where the soviets again resumed breaking their own endurance records.

When the Soviets were done with their rocket vehicles, they were simply left in whatever orbit their missions achieved, and the manned capsuls were shot back to earth, and to anybody's knowledge, are still in those earth orbits today, and there is nothing to suggest that they changed their ways: so every Soviet mission has left another vehicle in Earth orbit.

In my opinion, that was all because the Soviets knew that the USA and their NATO allies were in much greater control of the oceans and that anything fallign back to earth stood a much greater chance of falling into Capitalist hands and being scrutinized for the Soviets' secrets, than for safety, but, it achieved the same purpose: lots of primary stage rocket vehicles in earth orbit.


When NASA launched the Shuttle Enterprise, that all ended. From then on, with each Shuttle flight, anything that didn't fall back to earth, came back with the ship.. when it didn't explode in the upper atmosperhe, that is.