An out-of-commission Russian satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket orbiting the Earth more than 600 miles above the surface have a ‘very high risk’ of colliding tonight.
LeoLabs, a firm that tracks space debris, reveals these objects are likely to pass less than 40 feet from each other, and shared a model that shows a 10 per cent chance of the two smashing into each other at 20:56 ET on Thursday (01:56 BST Friday) just above Antarctica.
The objects have a combined mass of 2.8 metric tons, and the impact would add thousands of pieces of space junk – anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent more debris – to the 170 million currently floating in orbit.
The speed of the collision between the Russian Kosmos-2004 satellite and the Chinese Chang Zheng 4C rocket would be around 14.7km per second (32,882 miles per hour), LeoLabs estimates.
Although there is no threat to people on Earth, the man-made materials would pose a significant risk to functioning satellites in orbit....
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Although the worst-case scenario, according to LeoLabs' probability calculations, is not likely to happen, it's only a matter of time before another collision in near-Earth space could occur. A similar situation occurred at the beginning of the year when observers feared a collision of two long-dead space objects that were planned to pass at a distance of 15 to 30 meters from each other with a one-in-100 chance of collision, but eventually sailed harmlessly past each other.
ReplyDeleteLater, LeoLabs said on Twitter that there was "no indication of collision".