Colliding Satellites

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Someone earlier today remarked to me that you shouldn't worry about the sky falling on our heads.  How wrong they were.  A satellite owned and operated by Iridium Satellite LLC (used for global communications) and an allegedly defunct 16yr old Russian (probably ex-military) satellite collided, creating hundreds of pieces of debris.  The combined mass of these two satellies is approximately 1500kg ( around 3000 lbs if you're unable to understand the superior metric system).

Experts are hopeful that the debris will burn up on re-entry, and won't effect the other six thousand satellites in orbit, nor the International Space Station.  Probability is on their side.

I always assumed that all our 'space junk', and operational orbiting machinery was being closely tracked.  I hope I was right, and this was just an anomaly.

Of the approximately six thousand orbiting objects the Earth, three thousand are operational.

I for one am sorry that the Russian satellite Cosmos 2251 didn't reach it's starry sweet sixteenth birthday.

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