NASA: Top 10 Space Junk Missions (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: NASA' s Orbital Debris Program Office said that by far the source of the greatest amount of orbital debris remains the Fengyun-1C spacecraft, which was the target of a People's Republic of China anti-satellite test in January 2007. Much more debris is now floating around Earth's atmosphere since the six years NASA last looked at the top 10 space junk missions. The space agency says that 10 missions out of the 5,160 space missions that have launched since 1957 account for approximately one-third of all cataloged objects now in Earth orbit. NASA said that the second and fourth most significant satellite breakups are Cosmos 2251 and Iridium 33 spacecraft, which were involved in the first ever accidental satellite collision February 2009.

Comments

It was a message

[DNS-and-BIND]

When the Chinese used their ASAT weapon to destroy their own satellite, sending a huge cloud of debris in orbit, they were sending a message. Did anyone get it? What do you think the message was? I didn't see any discussion of this but it came through loud and clear.

The message was, don't fuck with us or we'll destroy your satellites and we don't give a shit how much space debris it creates. Since you are far more dependent on your satellites than we are on ours, you suffer much more in this scenario. If giving China an advantage means screwing up low earth orbit for hundreds of years, then so be it. You have the power to avoid this scenario by not putting us in a position where we feel threatened enough to use our ASAT weapons.

It's just weird seeing a government do things like this, in its own interest. Being an American, I just assume that my own government is going to regard its own country as best as an annoyance and at worst the enemy, and its real goals are global and trans-national. I assume a lot of Europeans feel the same way. It baffles me, seeing a government pursue goals that benefit its own country and not everyone else. I just don't have any frame of reference to compare it to.