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Satellites Collide in Orbit
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by Jordan Yerman | February 11, 2009 at 03:37 pm
100 views | 31 Recommendations | 3 comments
Do satellites ever collide with one another in space? Yes. In fact, it just happened.
A derelict Russian satellite, defunct for the past ten years, collided with an operational-until-just-now communications satellite operated by Iridium LLC. The debris created by the accident is not a big threat to the International Space Station.
In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today. The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it's not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites.
So do they trade insurance info?
Asked which satellite was at fault, Johnson said "they ran into each other. Nothing has the right of way up there. We don't have an air traffic controller in space. There is no universal way of knowing what's coming in your direction."
Other satellites may be at risk from the newly-created debris, as the full risk analysis is not yet complete.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 17:46 on February 11th, 2009
Yet another thumbs up vote for how humanity has been handling expansion into barely outer space... i mean... orbit... good thing that it's just the human-made crap that's all clustered together and out of control. Everything else in space is gianormously far apart from everything else in space.
unless you're an "ASTRO-NAUGHT"
i loved that bit about trading insurance info. that was pure gold.
It's also nice to have officials calmly admit that there IS NO SYSTEM IN PLACE FOR ORBITING OBJECTS WE THROW UP THERE!!
do you know that a fleck of PAINT once made a crack in one of the front windows of a US Space Shuttle?? (yeah, space shuttle... about as advanced as it gets... we're doomed as a species when our entire fleet of space craft are vehicles designed in the late 60's, built in the late 70's and supposed to have been retired in the late 80's are still "flying").
i'm all for human space flight. in fact, i'd love to do it myself.
just...
keep those bits of random garbage away from MY ship and make my ship actually space-worthy and solid enough that it can deal with a collision or two with specks of paint or even a small communications satellites...
Do you know how many pieces of debris NASA DOES track? LOTS. And that's only a tiny fragment (no pun intended) of the junk up there.
This isn't so unprecidented, just... bigger and more OO-ish.
at 17:47 on February 11th, 2009
forgot to give you points for the link to Yahoo answers... that's brilliant!
at 07:11 on February 12th, 2009
Accident, or planned elimination of functional orbital assets?
Was this a test of a plan to reduce a nation's communication and technological capability?