Russian, US satellites collide in space

What happens if something collides with earth

UFO Collisions

Moon crashing into earth

The above images are the depictions of an artist in the near future, so be prepared for the worst.

French spy satellite

In 1996, a French spy satellite, Cerise, was hit at about 30,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) per hour by a wheeling fragment left from an exploded Ariane rocket.
In June 1983, the windscreen of the US space shuttle Challenger had to be replaced after it was chipped by a fleck of paint measuring 0.01 of an inch (0.3 millimeters), that impacted at 2.5 miles (four kilometers) per second.

Space junk eventually falls to Earth, where it is usually completely consumed in the fiery heat of friction with the atmosphere. Re-entry can take weeks, months or many years, depending on the magnitude of the object's orbit.

Some 6,000 satellites have been sent into space since the Soviet Union launched the first man-made orbiter, Sputnik 1, in 1957. About 3,000 satellites remain in operation, according to NASA.

In a statement, Iridium called the crash an "extremely unusual, very low-probability event," adding it has 66 communication satellites in orbit and rejecting any fault for the accident.
With NASA monitoring the fallout from the accident, the US space agency said the launch of its space shuttle Discovery to the ISS due February 22 at the earliest would not be at risk.

"At this time, there is no danger to the scheduled launch," William Jeffs, a NASA spokesman based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, told AFP.
Before the latest incident, there were over 300,000 orbital objects measuring between 0.4 and four inches (1 and 10 centimeters) in diameter and "billions" of smaller pieces, according to a 2008 report by an international monitoring group called the Space Security Index.
Travelling at speeds that can reach many thousands of miles (kilometers) per hour, the tiniest debris can damage or destroy a spacecraft.

The debris from the defunct

The debris from the defunct 1,984-pound (900-kilogram) Russian satellite launched in 1993, and its 1,235-pound (560-kilogram) US counterpart could be significant.
"We are looking at around more than 500 pieces of debris," said Navy Lieutenant Charlie Drey, a spokesman with US Strategic Command (STRATCOM).

"Anytime you have something like this happen, there is a concern about other objects that are in orbit. Now that you have all this debris there, it does pose a risk to satellites," he told AFP.
Analysts are plotting the coordinates of each of the debris pieces, which will later be posted on the public website space-track.org.

Drey said STRATCOM's Joint Space Operations Center currently tracks and catalogs over 18,000 man-made objects orbiting the Earth using a worldwide space surveillance network of radar and optical space sensors.

ISS and Hubble under risk

The International Space Station (ISS) orbits about 220 miles (354 kilometers) above the Earth, far below the point of the collision.

But NASA's Earth observation satellites and the Hubble Space Telescope travel at higher orbits and could be at greater risk of damage.

"NASA's Earth-observing satellites orbit at an altitude of approximately 439 miles (707 kilometers), which is not far from the 491-mile (790 kilometers) altitude of the collision. They are of the highest concern as NASA learns more about the newly-created debris field," Yembrick said.

The news will raise concern over the growing swarms of hazardous debris orbiting the Earth, accumulated after more than five decades of human activity in space.

The magnitude of the two large debris clouds from the collision would not be known for at least several weeks, the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said.
"So far, NASA experts have determined that the risk to the space station is elevated. They estimate the risk to be very small and within acceptable limits," NASA spokesman John Yembrick told AFP.