[SoftwareEngineer]

Please do keep in mind that many analysts believe that the Iridium “incident” was a space war move. Take it for what it is worth, but a significant portion of analysts believe that this was a test to show how satellites could be knocked out of orbit WITHOUT an anti satellite missile launch

I can’t say any more at this point

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Like I said, the collision was “predictable” in the sense that the unclassified OES available prior to the collision had the satellites passing within 70 meters of one another. There is no established accuracy for OES and predictions. You can see celestrak.com for a discussion. Actual accuracy varies by satellite and celestrak.com and other users try to characterize the accuracy by evaluating how well older OES predict newer ones. Space Command’s position is that the OES are checked continually as observations become available, but if the new observations agree with the predictions of current OES within 5 km, no new OES are issued. They violated this rule after the Iridium-Kosmos collision by *reissuing* identical OES after the collision, more or less saying “we meant what we said”.

Like I said, OES available before the collision predicted that the two satellites would pass within 70 meters of one another. Iridium LLC says that they maneuver whenever a pass closer than 5 km is predicted. They may not have updated their predictions in time, I agree.

While Kosmos satellites maneuver, most of their maneuvering is done initially, right after launch to attain the desired orbit and occasionally thereafter for station keeping. It would be very difficult, if not impossible to have two satellites collide passed on ground based commands. U.S. interceptors have on-board sensors and closed loop guidance.