Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 Collision

High Definition video at http://agi.com ......................... On February 10 at approximately 1656 GMT, the Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 communications satellites collided over northern Siberia. The impact between the Iridium Satellite LLC-owned satellite and the 16-year-old satellite launched by the Russian government occurred at a closing speed of well over 15,000 mph at approximately 490 miles above the face of the Earth. The low-earth orbit (LEO) location of the collision contains many other active satellites that could be at risk from the resulting orbital debris.

To support the space community in better understanding this unprecedented satellite-to-satellite collision, AGI and CSSI have used their software to reconstruct the event. TLEs distributed via Celestrak.com and standard STK conjunction analysis tools have powered CSSIs SOCRATES service since 2004 for regularly performing all-on-all conjunction assessment calculations. Additionally, AGI and CSSI software has been used to help assess the possibility of additional collisions by applying breakup models for debris prediction.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Iridium
• 33
• Cosmos
• 2251
• Russian
• satellite
• collision
• impact
• space
• debris
• AGI
• STK
• CSSI
• SOCRATES

[Carlsagan93]

What's the name of that computer program?

[bonjovifan48]

When it is showing the debris, it says "Debris not to scale," in the bottom right. And I would bet that the dots are not the actual size, because if they were any smaller, we wouldn't be able to see where the sattelites were. For the debris field size, I bet it covers that area, but that is hundereds or thousands of little pieces that are not in a big crowd, probably with many feet or hundres of feet between. I doubt this is completely accurate, it just gives us a picture to put in our head.

[waislandres]

All that space and they manage to hit, amazing in itself. There is a theory about some 6,000 orbiting objects, at what point does a chain reaction take place, which could destroy most all orbiting satellites and contaminate orbital pathways for decades after that.

[TindeMom]

Vcelku to ujde to graficke znazornenie

[kasanabeer]

Даа, русские в космосе, ыыы

[Dzhuno]

ха-ха-ха. Всего за пару часов много миллионный проект США в каке....

[docatomics]

...eventually we create our own prison, where nothing can leave or enter earth , preventing us from going migration away from our point of origin/extinction & preventing our harvest of the universe until we grow a little wiser .

~ Ain't it amazing how the universe always seek balance , even with life that believes it is "intelligent" ?

[starstarstar42]

Yeah, this totally happened to my cousin also. He was just chillin on the corner when suddenly, BAM!!! Satellite Collision. He might never walk again.

[BBDonor9999]

space teris lol lol 666 666 13 13

[MLeyden91]

0:57 HOLY COW!

Look at that lot!

[dangerjuices]

i smell space tetris

but this is a big issue

[necroforest]

STK