Wednesday, February 11, 2009

That's going to make a big mess...

to clean up. An unprecedented collision between two Earth-orbiting satellites occurred yesterday where a US Iridium communications satellite struck a non-functional Russian Cosmos 2251 craft - or vice versa. The US Strategic Command is presently tracking two debris clouds in 790 km high orbits (more than twice the height of the International Space Station.)

Oops.

UPDATE: Diagram showing collision point over Siberia.

UPDATE: This raises issues of international space law.

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