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.