Two big pieces of space junk almost slammed into one another in low Earth orbit, highlighting the necessity to clear up space near home.
Leolabs, an area traffic management services which tracks satellites and other objects in orbit, spotted the close call on Sept. 13, as a defunct Soviet payload and a spent Chinese rocket body whizzed by one another at incredible speeds.
The conjunction of the 2 objects saw the pair pass one another head-on. Leolabs identified these as likely being Cosmos 807, an 880 kilos (400 kilograms) payload launched in 1976, and a roughly 4,400 lb. (2,000 kg) Chinese Long March 4C rocket stage launched five years ago.
Each would have been traveling at around 7.5 kilometers per second, or 16,800 miles per hour as they passed overhead at an altitude of around 428 miles (689 km). A collision of those highly-energetic, massive chunks of space junk would create around 3,000 pieces of debris in low Earth orbit, in accordance with Leolabs.
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Earth’s atmosphere may be very tenuous at this altitude, meaning it will take a protracted time for even the smaller pieces of debris created by such a collision to fall back to Earth out of harm’s way, increasing the danger for satellites operating in similar orbits.
⚠️ On Sept 13, a derelict Soviet-era payload had a conjunction with a Chinese rocket body. The miss distance was 36 m (± 13 m) and the probability of collision was 1E-3 (i.e., 0.1% or 1/1,000).While we have seen more nail biting events, this one is notable — here’s why. pic.twitter.com/f32vt8uuclSeptember 18, 2023
Leolabs calculated that the miss distance was 118 feet (36 meters), plus or minus 43 ft (13 m), giving the probability of collision as 0.1% or one in a thousand. Nevertheless, each pieces have have had tens of other close calls with other pieces of junk or operational satellites within the last couple of years.
At orbital speeds, even tiny pieces of debris can inflict incredible damage. This might threaten astronauts aboard the International Space Station or China’s Tiangong space station, or the flexibility to utilize orbits for Earth statement, science, communications and more.
A recent report from the European Space Agency noted that while latest measures to mitigate space debris are being adopted by countries and firms, the present debris in orbit makes our behavior in space unsustainable.
The brand new close call highlights the necessity to clean up our act in space and reduce the probabilities of cascading growth of dangerous space debris, often known as Kessler Syndrome.