U.S., Russian Satellites Collide in Space

In the first-ever collision in outer space, a United States commercial satellite collided with a Russian satellite, causing massive debris clouds.
U.S., Russian Satellites Collide in Space
2/11/2009
Updated:
2/11/2009
In the first-ever collision in outer space, a United States commercial satellite collided with a Russian satellite, causing massive debris clouds.

NASA reported the incident, saying that one of the satellites was launched in 1997 and belonged to the failed Iridium Communications project that aimed to create a global cellular network. The other satellite was a Russian Cosmos satellite launched in 1993.

The collision, which took place around 500 miles above Siberia, Russia, put the International Space Station at a “very small but elevated” risk of being struck, NASA said. The U.S. Strategic Command, which is responsible for space surveillance, detected around 600 pieces of debris.

The Russian satellite is believed to have been non-operational for more than 10 years. However, the Iridium Communications satellite was apparently still in use. The company released a statement saying that “Iridium Satellite LLC lost an operational satellite” but that the “event has minimal impact on Iridium’s service.”

The Iridium satellite constellation is a system of 66 active communication satellites that allows for worldwide cellular communication using handheld satellite phones. The service, launched in late 1998 by a Motorola Inc.-led consortium, filed for bankruptcy in August 1999. However, in 2001, a newly founded Iridium Satellite LLC, owned by private investors, purchased the firm and restarted the service.

Iridium is now being used extensively by the U.S. Department of Defense as well as for communication with remote science camps, such as those based in Antarctica.

The satellite collision was the first of its kind; investigators at NASA are still trying to find out the full details--including the cause--of the incident.

Such a collision in space, while possible, is very rare due to the massive distance of satellite orbits. In an interview with the Washington Post, Kelly Humphries, a spokeswoman for NASA from Houston said, “It gets down to probabilities. Space being very big, these pieces of debris being very small, the odds are very high that they’re not going to collide.”