This satellite was sent into space with a specific mission back in 2014. Experts guess what kind of mission it was.
U.S. Space Force officials have announced that a secret Russian satellite called Kosmos-2499 broke apart in an accident at an altitude of more than 1,000 km on Earth. As a result of this event, a cloud of 85 debris was formed in near-Earth space, which could threaten other spacecraft, including the International Space Station. About what was the possible mission of this satellite, writes Space.
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On February 7, representatives of the US Space Force announced that a secret Russian satellite, which was launched into space in May 2014, fell apart. But this event happened at the beginning of January of this year. As a result of the collapse of the spacecraft, 85 fragments of now space debris were formed, which will circle the Earth for a long time, posing a threat to other artificial objects in near-Earth orbit.
According to the US military, who track satellites in low Earth orbit, the satellite broke apart at an altitude of about 1169 km above the Earth’s surface. This is a very high altitude, so the debris will fly in space for a long time, because they will not yet be able to burn up in the atmosphere. What exactly led to the accident, as a result of which the Russian satellite Kosmos-2499 fell apart, is not yet known.
Also, this spacecraft is surrounded by another mystery: what kind of mission did it carry out in space? According to Anatoly Zak, an expert who monitors launches of Russian artificial objects into space, this device was sent into low Earth orbit along with three Russian military satellites. But officially, Russian officials have not reported that this satellite is as a payload on board the Rokot launch vehicle.
The US military initially identified the object as a piece of space debris. But after some time, this “garbage” began to perform certain maneuvers in space, as a result of which it probably went to approach the upper stage of the Rokot rocket called Breeze-M. Actually, this upper stage brought the satellites into space.
Representatives of the US Space Forces announced that a secret Russian satellite, which was launched into space in May 2014, fell apart
Photo: space.com
Already at the end of October 2014, the US military began to monitor the movement of this secret satellite. Observations showed that in November of the same year, Kosmos-2499 approached the upper stage several times at a distance of 530 to 760 meters.
Experts have speculated that Cosmos-2499 and another satellite called Cosmos 2491 (launched in December 2013 and also not officially announced) are on a mission to test new technology in space. This technology, perhaps, consists in the fact that satellites can pursue other devices, as well as, if necessary, disable them.
In December 2014, Oleg Ostapenko, who was the head of Roscosmos from 2013 to 2015, said that all satellites launched in May are used exclusively for peaceful purposes, but they also perform certain scientific tasks. That is, what exactly is their mission remained a mystery. But it was the words about unnamed scientific tasks that prompted experts to suggest that one of the satellites is most likely testing new military technology.
The most interesting thing is that Ostapenko said that all the devices coped with their task and completed the mission. But, according to Zach, Cosmos-2499, according to observations, remained in active operating mode at the beginning of 2017.
It is not known exactly when the satellite went down, but the fact that it no longer exists can be said with certainty, referring to the data of the US military. But the new debris cloud of 85 tracked pieces of space debris is complemented by some 36,000 more similar pieces in space, which do not exceed 10 cm in size.
According to the European Space Agency, we are talking about the largest fragments, but in low Earth orbit there may be approximately 130 million fragments of debris, the size of which does not exceed 1 mm.
Even the smallest pieces of space debris pose a threat to working satellites, as well as to the ISS, especially given their high speed of movement. For example, the orbital station, which is located two times lower from the place where the Kosmos-2499 satellite fell apart, circles the Earth at a speed of 28 thousand km / h.
Focus already wrote that new fragments of space debris, which were formed from Russian space objects, can lead to a real catastrophe in near-Earth orbit.
