“Very high risk” of extinct Russian satellite and Chinese rocket body colliding tonight: report



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Experts believe the Russian satellite is missing and the deactivated Chinese missile may have crashed high on Thursday, according to reports.

LeoLabs, a satellite tracking company, said on Wednesday that extinct objects could reach a distance of 39 feet from each other and there was a 10% chance they could collide at around 8:56 pm. The company considered the potential incident to be “high risk”.

“This event is still high risk and is likely to remain so at the time of the next approach,” tweeted LeoLabs.

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Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said the two objects had destroyed a Soviet navigation satellite called Parus. [Kosmos 2004] started in 1989 and the Chinese missile stage.

Since Tuesday, the objects – weighing about three metric tons – have been in orbit in the low Earth at an altitude of about 615 miles, LeoLabs said.

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Since the objects are high above the ground, they pose no risk to anyone on the ground. However, the collision could cause more debris to orbit the Earth, which could increase the risk of future collisions.

The wreck could also endanger astronauts.

“If it turns into a collision, there are likely to be thousands to tens of thousands of new pieces of debris that will cause headaches to any satellite that enters lower Earth’s upper orbit or even beyond,” said Dan Ceperley. LeoLabs CEO, according to Business Insider. “Maybe it’s a much bigger problem than many people realize.”

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As of February this year, the European Space Agency has 128 million debris in orbit. About 34,000 of these objects are larger than 10 cm.

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