Russian Cosmos satellite collided with Iridium satellite
A defunct Russian Cosmos satellite & a communication satellite owned by the US firm Iridium collided some 790 kilometres above northern Siberia on Tuesday.
Orbital Debris
“This is the first time that two intact spacecraft have accidentally run into each other,” says Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist of NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office in Houston, Texas.
US military, which tracks objects spanning 10 centimetres or more, has already detected more than 500 pieces of debris from the collision. The chance the debris will collide with other spacecraft is still unclear. The International Space Station, which orbits at an altitude of some 350 kilometres, does not seem to be at immediate risk of colliding with the debris.
It is unclear whether the risk of the collision was predicted in advance. The US defense department monitors some 18,000 objects in orbit around the Earth, Johnson says, and this data is publicly available for most satellites.
