by Bob Walsh
There may be a potentially dangerous collision in space today between a dead Soviet satellite and a used Chinese rocket stage. The two items together weigh over three tons. The real fear is that they may start an unpredictable set of chain reaction collisions.
The initial collision, if it takes place, will be at 990 km above the planet. They two objects have a velocity of over 32,500 mph relative to each other and will create a lot of junk flying all over the place. Right now the people who study such things THINK they will miss by about 80 feet. That isn't for sure.
In September the International Space Station had to move itself to dodge some space junk.
The potential is that we could end up with a fast moving blanket of space junk in a low earth orbit that could inhibit our ability to put anything in high earth orbit. That would be irritating, and bad.
Good news. They missed. Maybe by as little as 20 feet, but they missed. So now we will not have a huge number of secondary collisions going on doing bad things.
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