NASA reports collision of US, Russian
satellites in space
Washington: A privately owned US communication satellite collided with a defunct
Russian satellite in orbit posing a risk to the international space station, which a
NASA official said was the first such incident in space.
It was the first such collision in space, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said
Wednesday, adding that the magnitude of the accident was still unknown. NASA will
take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the crash, which occurred Tuesday nearly
790 km over Siberia, at an altitude used by satellites that monitor weather and carry
telephone communications among other things.
According to an e-mail alert issued by NASA Wednesday, Russia's Cosmos 2251 satellite
slammed into the Iridium 33 satellite at 11.55 a.m. (0455 GMT). The incident was
observed by the US Defence Department's Space Surveillance Network, which later
tracked two large clouds of debris.
"This is the first time we have ever had two intact spacecraft accidentally run into each
other," said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office
at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "It was a bad day for both of them."
He said outdated spacecraft, rocket stages and other components break apart in space
every year, but there have only been three relatively minor collisions between such
objects in the last 20 years. Never before have two intact satellites crashed into one
another by accident, he added.
The debris created in Tuesday's collision is being tracked to assess its risk of damaging
other satellites and the International Space Station, which is currently home to two
American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut.
The space station orbits at an altitude of about 354 km, well below the impact point
between the Russian and US satellites.
NASA believed that any risk to the space station and its three astronauts is low. There
also should be no danger to a space shuttle set to launch Feb 22 with seven astronauts,
officials said, but that will be re-evaluated in the coming days.
The risk of damage from Tuesday's collision is greater for the Hubble Space Telescope
and Earth-observing satellites, which are in higher orbit and nearer the debris field. At the
Docsity.com
