Mobile satellite phone service provider Iridium found one of its orbiting satellites knocked offline when it collided with a non-working Russian satellite 500 miles above Siberia on Tuesday. According to NASA, debris from the accident is potentially dangerous although it’s “very small and within acceptable limits.” The debris will be tracked by scientists.
Bethesda, Maryland-based Iridium said that some of its wireless clients may experience outages but the company plans to have systems working normally by today and plans to launch a backup satellite in less than a month. Iridium states that the collision was an “extremely unusual, very low-probability event.”
The Russian military satellite was launched back in 1993 and apparently malfunctioned within two years. NASA’s planned launch of Space Shuttle Discovery at the end of the month will not likely be affected by the crash and the International Space Station is out of harm’s way but is capable “of doing a debris-avoidance maneuver if necessary,” according to NASA.
[via BBC News]
It’s about time the UN got serious about forcing ALL countries to clean up all their space junk. Easier said than done, but at this rate someone soon is going to get ventilated by a paint flake or loose screw travelling at 20,000+ mph.
wouldn’t debris that small burn up in reentry before being able to hurt someone?
It’s what it can do to the ISS or astronaut on an EVA that creeps people out. Neither is equipped to survive a hole made by a faster-than-a-speeding-bullet piece of junk, but why should toxic trash suddenly be news? We’ve been dumping trash into landfills, the ocean, and the air for some centuries, and gory death is not an uncommon outcome. Is this perhaps more colorful or something?