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Two satellites collide in orbit
Spaceflight Now ^ | February 11, 2009 | WILLIAM HARWOOD

Posted on 02/11/2009 1:39:00 PM PST by Names Ash Housewares

In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a presumably defunct Russian Cosmos satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today.

The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it's not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites.

"They collided at an altitude of 790 kilometers (491 miles) over northern Siberia Tuesday about noon Washington time," said Nicholas Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects."

One source said nearly 300 fragments were being tracked, but Johnson said it was not yet clear how much debris was generated.

"It's going to take a while," he said. "It's very, very difficult to discriminate all those objects when they're really close together. And so, over the next couple of days, we'll have a much better understanding. But it's at a minimum, I think we're talking many, many dozens, if not hundreds."

(Excerpt) Read more at spaceflightnow.com ...


TOPICS: Front Page News
KEYWORDS: satellites; space
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To: Names Ash Housewares
Hey, maybe Earth will get rings out of this - like Saturn!!!
101 posted on 02/11/2009 4:05:36 PM PST by fwdude ("...a 'centrist' ... has few principles - and those are negotiable." - Don Feder)
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To: dr_who
is that the clock you can sync your pc too instead of the ms clock???
102 posted on 02/11/2009 5:27:33 PM PST by Chode (American Hedonist -)
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To: evets
That chick is so

NOT GUILTY.

(hubba hubba)

103 posted on 02/11/2009 5:45:08 PM PST by SIDENET ("If that's your best, your best won't do." -Dee Snider)
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To: library user

When Steve Faucett’s body was found near the wreckage they moved that to chat also.


104 posted on 02/11/2009 6:21:01 PM PST by valkyry1
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To: Names Ash Housewares

I guess there is less communicating going on today.


105 posted on 02/11/2009 6:59:39 PM PST by citizen (Fascism: All persons, capital & activities exist to support the will & best interests of the State.)
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To: Names Ash Housewares

Too bad they don’t have one way orbits and speed limits.


106 posted on 02/11/2009 7:00:48 PM PST by Rebelbase
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To: Steve Van Doorn

Is it ‘bound to happen’? Sure, but over what time span? What are the odds that the number of satellites currently in space will have precisely the same altitude and will intersect with another’s orbit, at the same exact instant in time? How often would one expect one such an event? Maybe one was intentionally placed in the same orbit at some point, perhaps nefariously, and their relative closeness resulted in a collision, but I want someone smarter than me to calculate the probability and such before my suspicions will be put to rest that this is just a one in ? years event.


107 posted on 02/11/2009 7:05:13 PM PST by metalcor
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To: Names Ash Housewares

They’ve been trying for 12 years to knock out the Iridium constellation. Those are the telecom satelites that belong to Osama’s brother, that provide un trackable mobil phones anywhere in the world.


108 posted on 02/11/2009 7:07:28 PM PST by editor-surveyor (The beginning of the O'Bummer administration looks a lot like the end of the Nixon administration)
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To: Names Ash Housewares

Is Putin testing Obama?


109 posted on 02/11/2009 7:11:05 PM PST by choirboy
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To: dr_who
did you play with the settings or click on any of the sats???

you can click and drag on the screen to change the attitude and rotation too

speeding it up makes it look like a swarm of angry bees...

110 posted on 02/11/2009 7:29:45 PM PST by Chode (American Hedonist -)
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To: metalcor
The first collision in space took place in 1996:
Cerise_(satellite)

You can see at around 1000km there is a lot of debris.

111 posted on 02/11/2009 7:34:22 PM PST by Steve Van Doorn (*in my best Eric cartman voice* 'I love you guys')
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To: Names Ash Housewares

won’t the debris continue to spread out?


112 posted on 02/11/2009 8:18:02 PM PST by GeronL (please stand by...)
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To: RichInOC
WHAT HAPPEN?

Someone set us up the bomb!

Enjoy

113 posted on 02/11/2009 8:31:59 PM PST by Don W (People who think are a threat to socialism)
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Comment #114 Removed by Moderator

To: Retired Greyhound

All your base...


115 posted on 02/12/2009 6:40:19 AM PST by evets (beer)
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To: Steve Van Doorn

Yup. One piece in 5,000 to 10,000 cubic Kilometers if I did my math right (hate to say I’m rusty with simple geometry, but it’s sort of like riding a bike).

The biggest pieces at that level might have the mass of a small car. If they stayed in one place it wouldn’t be much of a problem, but since they are moving at near 5 KM per second it’s a bit more so.

But as we like to say when we consider blowing the stop at a railroad crossing on a track that gets used maybe once a month, “astronomical” (perhaps the last word from the driver of a truck carrying a work crew that left the world of the living at that particular crossing).


116 posted on 02/12/2009 9:02:26 AM PST by Clinging Bitterly (Posting from an undisclosed location in the Nation of Bitter Clingers.)
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To: Steve Van Doorn

‘You can see at around 1000km there is a lot of debris.’

And a hell of a lot of space at that altitude. I still say the odds of two satellites (not a couple of big clouds of debris, but objects that aren’t much more than a few cubic meters in size) intersecting the same point in space at exactly the same time has to be astronomically low (pun intended). I’ve tried to find the figure somewhere, but have had no success. Are they really that densely populated that we can expect a collision every 10 years or so? I bet some insurance actuary has done the calcs already, but inquiring minds want to know. All I have found thus far is ‘extremely unusual’ ‘low probability event’, etc.


117 posted on 02/12/2009 10:53:55 AM PST by metalcor
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