VIDEO: THE U.S.'s IRIDIUM 33 SATELLITE COLLIDING WITH THE RUSSIAN COSMOS 2251 SATELLITE

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.



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