Collision in orbit
Did you hear about the two satellites that collided in orbit this week? It happened on Tuesday, almost 500 miles above the Earth (if you’re wondering, that’s much higher than either the International Space Station or the Hubble Space Telescope)
One of the satellites was operational (of the Iridium ‘constellation’) and the other was non-operational (Russian). We’ll have to wait for more details, but this is considered the first major collision of two sizable objects.
Unfortunately, as Earth’s orbital environment becomes more and more crowded these incidents will occur more often. Don Kessler, an oribital debris expert who previously worked for NASA warns that “while it took 50 years for Earth orbit to become sufficiently congested that we would expect such an event, it will take only about 10 years before another can be expected.”
Posted February 20, 2009 at 12:00 am | Flag this comment