2/ It's important to note that this conjunction occurred in one of the "bad neighborhoods" we've talked about before: 950 - 1050 km. 🏚️
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Too close for comfort... 😳
Two large, defunct objects in
#LEO
narrowly missed each other this morning — an SL-8 rocket body (16511) and Cosmos 2361 (25590) passed by one another at an altitude of 984km. 🚀⚠️
#SpaceDebris
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1/ Based on our radar tracking data, we computed a miss distance of only 6 meters with an error margin of only a few tens of meters.
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3/ This region has significant debris-generating potential in
#LEO
due to a mix of breakup events and abandoned derelict objects. 🛰️🚀🪨
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4/ In particular, this region is host to ~160 SL-8 rocket bodies along with their ~160 payloads deployed over 20 years ago. 🚀🛰️
*There were 1,400 high-PC conjunctions involving these rocket bodies between June - September 2022 alone.
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6/ Why's this a big deal? 🤔
We've identified this kind of collision — between two massive derelict objects — as a "worst-case scenario" because it's largely out of our control and would likely result in a ripple effect of dangerous collisional encounters.
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7/ Had the SL-8 rocket body and Cosmos 2361 collided, it likely would've resulted in thousands of new debris fragments that would have persisted for decades.
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7/ It's imperative that we not only focus on collision avoidance but also debris mitigation and debris remediation to combat
#SpaceDebris
. This requires investing in debris removal technologies and missions. 🧹🗑️
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8/ ✍️ For more information on combatting
#SpaceDebris
, read (or listen) to
@MattShouppe
's piece on the best practices to cleaning up
#space
.
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9/ To learn more about potential disasters in
#LEO
, including "dead object on dead object collisions," check out Dan Ceperley's guide.
#SpaceDebris
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