Space-craft
agencies
Two huge pieces of space junk regarding 19 feet (six meters) came close to colliding with each other, and according to experts, it was close to becoming a worst-case scenario, which might have created thousands of new pieces of dangerous debris.
According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, the dramatic moment between a finished spy satellite and an old Soviet missile will reignite concerns regarding crowding in low Earth orbit, as space agencies and private companies around the world try to come up with solutions on how best to deal with it.
Most objects pose very little threat to us here on Earth, because a lot of space junk would only burn up if it entered the atmosphere, but in orbit there are important satellites that provide GPS and weather warnings that can be damaged, and there is the International Space Station.
LeoLabs, a satellite monitoring company, spotted the imminent collision and said it was very close. The company identified the two objects as a residual SL-8 rocket and a Russian spy satellite, Cosmos 2361.
The former was a Soviet missile that first entered service in 1964 and continued to fly until 2009, while the latter was launched in 1998 and is designed to intercept electronic signals such as radio communications or radar transmissions.
There are currently approximately 30,000 pieces of orbital debris being tracked by the US Department of Defense, although many pieces are too small to detect.
Also, although missile launches vary, boosters and other large parts of the missile fall to the ground or are left in orbit. In most cases, abandoned missile parts re-enter the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner and debris may fall anywhere along the flight path. .
