Crazy!<\/p>\n
Russian and US satellites collide (bbc.co.uk)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n US and Russian communications satellites have collided in space in the first such reported mishap.<\/p>\n A satellite owned by the US company Iridium hit a defunct Russian satellite at high speed nearly 780km 485 miles over Siberia on Tuesday, Nasa said.<\/p>\n The risk to the International Space Station and a shuttle launch planned for later this month is said to be low.<\/p>\n The impact produced a massive cloud of debris, and the magnitude of the crash is not expected to be clear for weeks.<\/p>\n The reportedly non-operational Russian satellite, weighing 950kg 2,094lb, had been launched in 1993, while the Iridium satellite weighed 560 kg and was launched in 1997.<\/p>\n When two such objects collide with such force, the ensuing debris can destroy other satellites, says the BBC's Andy Gallacher in Florida.<\/p>\n But Nasa said the risk to the ISS and its three astronauts was low as the station orbits the earth some 435km below the course of the collision.<\/p>\n It is hoped that most of the wreckage from the collision will burn up in the earth's atmosphere, our correspondent says.<\/p>\n Hundreds of pieces of wreckage are now being tracked, reports say, adding to the tens of thousands of objects that are routinely tracked through space.<\/p>\n Some 6,000 satellites have been sent into orbit since 1957.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n [Edited to add:]<\/em> There is an animation of the satellite crash<\/a> available for Google Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Crazy! Russian and US satellites collide (bbc.co.uk) US and Russian communications satellites have collided in space in the first such reported mishap. A satellite owned by the US company Iridium hit a defunct Russian satellite at high speed nearly 780km 485 miles over Siberia on Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}