Saturday 21 February 2009

Aftermath of a space collision

Over 200 fragments of the Feb 10th collision between Kosmos 2251 and Iridium 33 have now been catalogued. Together, they form two impressive orbital planes filled with debris. The amount of Kosmos 2251 debris catalogued so far is about twice as large as that for Iridium 33 - it seems the Kosmos took the most serious blow.

Most of this debris will stay up for tens of years. About 6% of the Kosmos and 3% of the Iridium debris will decay in the next 2.7 years.

(click images to enlarge)


1 comment:

markogts said...

Oh finally the Earth has rings too! LOL Great blog, I'm following you regularily. Cheers!