It's like something from a Bond film: on Tuesday, 400 miles above Siberia, a defunct Russian satellite and a US-owned communications satellite collided at 420 mph, smashing each other into more that 500 fragments. Apparently it's the first time two satellites in orbit have collided, but I doubt if it'll be the last. There's a lot of junk up there!Image: ESA
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4 comments:
I wouldn't want to be launching into space today!
It real is amazing that it hasn't happened before. Do they have to plug in the orbit of the satellite? Do they know that it isn't on the same track as any others?
That pic is really creepy! How many satellites/bits of old shuttle/astronauts' tool boxes are floating up there I wonder?
It's surely more amazing that it's happened rather than the fact that it's never happened before. Space is pretty big!
I thought this was interesting. These guys at Southampton have been looking at space junk and trying to work out the likelihood of bits colliding by modelling all the junk as a network.
http://www.soton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2008/oct/08_185.shtml
I wonder what the odds are on two satellites colliding?
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