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Possible Collision Between Cube-satellite and Old Space Junk

Posted by Soulskill on from the shades-of-kessler dept.

photonic writes "The BBC is reporting on a possible collision between Ecuador's first satellite (a small cubesat) and debris from an upper stage of an old Russian rocket. If confirmed, this might be the third case in recent years, after a high-speed collision of an Iridium satellite with a dead Russian satellite in 2009 and a collision earlier this year between a Russian laser reflector (which can be tracked very accurately) and a tiny piece of a debris from a Chinese weather satellite that was destroyed in a missile test."

8 of 74 comments (clear)

  1. Fiction begets reality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I guess it was only a matter of time before Planetes became relevant.

  2. Kessler Syndrome by invid · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think it has started.

    --
    The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
    1. Re:Kessler Syndrome by Sockatume · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Surely it's not Kessler syndrome until you have debris from one collision causing a further collision? In each of the incidents described above, an existing piece of debris not originating in a collision was the cause of the incident.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    2. Re:Kessler Syndrome by Sockatume · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Kessler syndrome is a self-sustaining chain reaction, I really don't think that deliberate collisions count towards it.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    3. Re:Kessler Syndrome by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Funny

      Surely it's not Kessler syndrome until you have debris from one collision causing a further collision? In each of the incidents described above, an existing piece of debris not originating in a collision was the cause of the incident.

      Surely it's not the Kessler syndrome until someone makes the run in less than 12 parsecs... or am I missing something?

  3. Re:Butts and dicks by fredrated · · Score: 4, Funny

    Thank you for your experience-based post.

  4. Maybe it was too annoying for LEO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Pegasus, a small cube weighing just 1.2kg (2.6lb), has been orbiting the Earth at a height of 650km (404 miles), transmitting pictures from space while playing recordings of the Ecuadorean national anthem."

    Maybe all the other satellites in orbit were getting annoyed by this little guy and took him out.

  5. what kinds of spikes do such comments cause? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if someone who watches /. but also monitors torrent/nzb index searchers, ever sees a correlation. Or if people who run indexes just think, "weird, lots of people suddenly searching for 'planetes' today. WTF?" and they never know why? Anyway, downloading the first few episodes right now...