Breaking News: Two Satellites Collide In Orbit

In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a presumably defunct Russian Cosmos 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.

Visit the source for the full text:spaceflightnow.com

Wow! I guess it had to happen sooner or later!

There is already allot of junk up there, and we keep adding more. Could this be a little glimpse into the future!?

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


I would say - yes - it IS a little glimpse into the future.
We have never been responsible for where we throw our trash.
We bury it in the soil, throw it in the ocean and send it into space.
Plastic, nuclear waste - you name it - we try to hide it.
This species - not so smart.

Kind of like in the recent kid's movie "Walle" When they leave Earth they have to go through a huge junkyard in space that surrounds the whole planet.
What they should do is send up junk collector satelites OR vaporize them using ultra secret defense satelites and by doing so, would also get some target practice in.

Is there any word on how great of an area in orbit will this newly formed space junk render inaccessible ?

Just a though , its this kind of thing , space junk , that will have to be addressed in the future or we will run the risk of blocking ourselves in . Space junk could very well be the catalyst that leads to the creation of energy shields long before they are needed to combat pesky aliens

this is for real?

ive been waiting for this moment for years!!
too bad it wasnt that flash new spacestation, tossers!

Isn't there an organization that tracks all the space junk?

A little forewarning , the next time, would be helpful. I would like to know when I should keep my eyes to the sky to, perhaps, avoid a refrigerator falling upon my person.

Maybe this was deliberate?

Maybe this was the first test?

Maybe we can expect more and more satellites to be"destroyed" soon?

-There I go again.

I just hope that it really was an accident and not a subtle threat, not that I'm one to jump onto the conspiracymobile.

I wonder if our planet is a big cosmic joke, kind of like that redneck uncle with an old impala on blocks in the front yard, and a couple mangy dogs and dirty kids eating from the same bowl. We could be the backwater jerks of the galaxy for all we know, throwing our trash wherever.

[edit on 11-2-2009 by g raj]

the junk from this could be dangerous for other sattelites now. watch this space

Originally posted by pyrytyes
Isn't there an organization that tracks all the space junk?

NORAD does a lot of the tracking, I suppose the Russians and Chineese might have their own, I don't know.

But more space junk up there, great... I heard astromners and such like on the sky at night say that when the Chineese shot that satalite in high orbit with the missile that one incident DOUBLES the amount of junk in orbit, and that will be there for at least a thousand years... Considering a paint flake can damage kit seriously it's getting dangerous up there, and I can't think of much they could do about it.

Originally posted by g raj
I wonder if our planet is a big cosmic joke, kind of like that redneck uncle with an old impala on blocks in the front yard, and a couple mangy dogs and dirty kids eating from the same bowl. We could be the backwater jerks of the galaxy for all we know, throwing our trash wherever.

[edit on 11-2-2009 by g raj]

I have thought that many times,

you phrase it brilliantly for this situation!

reply to post by g raj


If yew have tons of satellites orbitting yer planet,
...you jest mite be an Earthling!

lol.

indeed but who knows it might happened before with spy satellites?

until the point there is so much junk up there that is not safe to launch into space anymore because of collision danger.

Anyone know which iridium or cosmos was involved? I want to track the debris while it's still close together.

reply to post by Alxandro


As soon as I read this, I asked myself, "What was the real purpose of those satellites?"

So, I agree.

Could this have been intentional?

Apparently NASA has confirmed it, but I'm having trouble finding any reference on the NASA website. This seems legit though.

For one, there is no longer an orbit available for the Russian sat from NASA's JTrack3D, assuming there was one there before (likely IMO).

All ATSers, especially those living along the predicted tracks of the satellites should stay alert for re-entering junk, since most will keep going in generally the same direction as it was before the collision.

I still don't know which Iridium was involved, so we can't track that right now, but you can still track Cosmos 2251 via heavens-above.com if you enter you location, and then click where it says Select a satellite from the database. Here is what the the track looks like at the time of writing:




It should be approaching/over the US by the time I submit this post!





[edit on 11-2-2009 by C.H.U.D.]

How fast do these things travel up there? It would have been great to watch! lol.

reply to post by C.H.U.D.


Good work. It seems to have been Iridium 33 that was destroyed (according to space.com). Here's the orbit from heavens-above:

Doesn't look too similar on the ground track so it might be faulty reporting, but remember all it takes is an intersection point of the orbits, the planes need not be similar.
Also, here's a dynamic map of cosmos 2251. Bear in mind that the track is not static and will appear to move as the earth rotates underneath the debris' orbit:

Unfortunately, I can't even view either of these until march due to the timing of their orbits. Anyone have a shot at seeing it sometime in the next couple days?
PS to Lee: 7.5 km per second, give or take.

[edit on 11-2-2009 by ngchunter]

Originally posted by Max_TO
Is there any word on how great of an area in orbit will this newly formed space junk render inaccessible ?

They are still trying to work that out:

"As of about 12 hours ago, I think the head count was up (to around) 600 pieces," Carey told CBS News late today. "It's going to take about two days before we get a solid picture of what the debris fields look like. But you, I think, can imply that the majority of that should be probably along the same line as the original orbits."

"Yesterday, we did an assessment of what the risk might be to station and we found it's going to be very, very small. As time goes on, those debris will (come down) some over months, most over years and decades and as the big ones come down they'll be tracked, we'll see them and the worst-case scenario, we'll just dodge them if we have to. It's the small things you can't see are the ones that can do you harm."

Source: spaceflightnow.com