2024-04-23 17:00:04
NASA had warned last February: there was a near collision between two satellites, which had crossed paths barely 20 meters apart. A minimal difference in the scale of the space, and enough to cause a few cold sweats among the operators.
More as told by Gizmodomore in-depth analyzes by teams from the US space agency discovered that the risk was actually even greater, and that disaster was narrowly avoided.
A NASA administrator, Pam Melroy, specifies: “We recently learned that the distance between the two was less than 10 meters. […] It was extremely shocking to me, but also to everyone at NASA.”
The two protagonists of the “near miss” are on the one hand TIMED, an American satellite launched in 2001 and responsible for analyzing parts of the Earth’s atmosphere, and on the other hand Cosmos 2221, a Russian military satellite in orbit since 1992 .Both have completed their mission and can no longer be guided, forcing Earth observers to scrutinize the data, hoping not to be helpless witnesses to a space crash.
An extremely rare accident… at the moment
Because if the satellites themselves no longer have much value, a collision would be catastrophic: it could generate hundreds, even thousands, of new space debris. These pieces, sometimes a few centimeters in size, then begin traveling in orbit at speeds of several thousand km/h, threatening active satellites but also potential manned missions.
These risks are taken very seriously, especially since precedents have already arisen: in 2021, a satellite destruction test by Russia caused the appearance of a number of debris. Years later, the International Space Station still has to perform regularly maneuvers to avoid them.
At the end of 2023, one operator even suffered a fine of $150,000 (about 140,600 euros) for not having controlled a satellite at the end of its life, which itself had become one of these wandering and dangerous debris.
Today, there are almost 36,000 pieces of debris measuring more than ten centimeters, but the smallest often remain invisible, and therefore even more dangerous. Regulations already force operators to quickly decommission their useless satellites so that they fall and self-destruct upon entering the atmosphere, and surveillance systems closely monitor the situation.
Precautions are not always sufficient, as there is one space crash documented to date. That was in 2009and the protagonists – already two satellites, Russian and American – had collided approximately 789 kilometers over Siberia.
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