California-based company LeoLabs, which tracks objects in low Earth orbit, announced that two satellites nearly collided there this week. It was supposed to be NASA’s TIMED satellite and the defunct Russian Cosmos 2221 satellite.
The situation occurred on Wednesday at half past two in the morning Central European time, reported LeoLabs on the X network. The satellites flew past each other at a height of about 608 kilometers above the Earth so close that they almost collided with each other – only twenty meters separated them from the collision. Both are moving at a speed of around 28,000 kilometers per hour.
“It was too close for comfort,” reported LeoLabs. The most modern of the satellites was the American probe Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics Mission (TIMED), which was launched into orbit by NASA in 2001 with the aim of studying the upper layers of the atmosphere. The second object was the Russian Cosmos 2221 satellite from 1992. It originally had a military purpose, but it has been defunct for many years – it has therefore become a typical piece of space debris.
None of the objects has a drive that would allow them to maneuver and thus avoid a collision.
Rainfall possible and real
NASA on the possibility of a collision she pointed out already in advance with the fact that he will monitor the situation in detail. At the same time, it expressed concern on its website that a possible collision would result in a significant amount of debris. These would then mean an additional risk for other satellites as well – and this could have an avalanche effect.
The event had no effect on the International Space Station (ISS), which moves much lower – about two hundred kilometers closer to Earth.
According to LeoLabs, such close encounters are rare. There have only been six similar incidents in the last two years. So far, however, humanity has been lucky, as a real collision in orbit has only occurred once. It happened in 2009, when the American communications satellite Iridium 33 and the Russian military satellite Kosmos-2251 collided less than eight hundred kilometers above the planet. The consequence at that time was the creation of about 1,800 fragments larger than ten centimeters. If the collision described above had occurred, there would have been over 2,500 pieces of debris, according to LeoLabs.
2024-02-29 12:49:22
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