TOPLINE
Debris released from a defunct Russian satellite this week could eventually collide with SpaceX satellites or the International Space Station, according to LeoLabs, space safety company that uses radar to track satellites and space debris in low earth orbit.
KEY FACTS
LeoLabs detected a “debris-generating event” early Thursday morning from the RESURS O1 (23342), a defunct Russian satellite launched in November 1994.
Mike Nicolls, LeoLabs’ CTO, told Forbes that “tens” of pieces of machinery from the satellite are now in the Earth’s orbit and have the potential to collide with objects in space, though the company is still in the process of tracking the debris.
The exact cause of the event is unknown, but Nicolls says it could have resulted from a collision with a small piece of debris, or a part of the satellite, such as a fuel tank, could have malfunctioned and broken away from the spacecraft.
Nicolls said this particular event is concerning because the debris is orbiting at a high altitude, which means those pieces could stay in orbit for years and eventually intersect with the orbit of the International Space Station or SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. (Neither NASA nor SpaceX immediately responded to a request for comment from Forbes.)
Though objects in space get close to each other often, Nicolls said, risky debris-generating events are less common—LeoLabs only tracked one event similar to magnitude earlier this year, when two defunct satellites almost collided above the city of Pittsburgh, but narrowly missed.
The United Nations recommend that operators remove satellites from orbit 25 years after they’ve completed their mission, but there are still plenty of older, defunct satellites in orbit, along with nearly 130 million pieces of smaller “space junk,” according to the European Space Agency.
Key background
There are about 2,666 satellites orbiting the Earth, according to a tally from the Union of Concerned Scientists—but private companies are making plans to send up even more satellites in the coming decades, increasing the risk of debris-generating events, Nicolls said. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for example, wants to eventually launch 42,000 satellites above the Earth to provide widespread broadband internet access. And Amazon’s Project Kuiper got FCC approval late last month to deploy a constellation of 3,236 satellites.
