The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be non-functioning. The Russian satellite was out of control. The Iridium craft weighed 1,235 pounds, and the Russian craft nearly a ton. No one has any idea yet how many pieces were generated or how big they might be.
A commercial satellite collided with a Russian satellite over Siberia yesterday, yielding a cloud of fragments, according to a NASA scientist tracking space debris. The collision between the commercial satellite, belonging to the American communications firm Iridium, and the Russian satellite, believed to be defunct based on its advanced age, was the first of its kind, says Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist at the NASA Orbital Debris Program at Johnson Space Centre in Houston.
The collision involved an Iridium commercial satellite, which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite launched in 1993 and believed to be nonfunctioning. Each satellite weighed well over 1,000 pounds. Read more
The crash, which happened Tuesday in low-earth orbit, involved one of the satellites owned by closely held Iridium Satellite LLC and a defunct Russian spy satellite. The Russian craft was spinning out of control, industry officials said, and was being monitored by Pentagon organisations that keep track of space debris and prevent in-orbit collisions from damaging or destroying both commercial and government satellites.
"They collided at an altitude of 790 kilometres over northern Siberia Tuesday about noon Washington time. The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects" - Nicholas Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
A commercial Iridium communications satellite collided with a Russian satellite or satellite fragment, Tuesday, creating a cloud of wreckage in low-Earth orbit, officials said Wednesday. The international space station is not threatened by the debris, they said, but it's not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other satellites in similar orbits.