Two Massive Space Pieces Likely To Collide Tonight, Making Earth’s Orbit More Crowded, Dangerous

Science
By OB Bureau
Orbital debris around Earth - Image credit: NASA

As the accumulation of debris increases in space, by Thursday night, Earth’s orbit is about to get “a lot more crowded, and a lot more dangerous”, according to a report by website Space.com.

A series of tweets by California based tracking company LeoLabs, reveals that two big pieces of space junk are zooming toward a close approach that will occur Thursday at 8:56 p.m. EDT (0056 GMT on Oct. 16).

The encounter will take place 616 miles (991 kilometers) above the South Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Antarctica.

LeoLab’s calculations estimate the probability of a collision to be more than 10%. The report states this to be “a scarily high number”, considering that the combined mass of the objects, hurtling towards each other at a relative velocity of 32,900 mph (52,950 km/h), is about 6,170 lbs. (2,800 kilograms).

“This event continues to be very high risk and will likely stay this way through the time of closest approach,” tweeted LeoLabs.

A “search-mode scan” scheduled for shortly after the close approach should reveal if a collision occurred and created more debris, LeoLabs tweeted later today.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and satellite tracker, identified the two objects as a defunct Soviet navigation satellite called Parus (or Kosmos 2004) and a Chinese rocket stage.

“Here’s my own visualization of the encounter. Kosmos-2004 (red) is heading south towards the pole, CZ-4C-Y4 (purple) is heaeding north towards the Falklands.”, he said in a tweet.

In another tweet, he added that a smashup would likely result in a “significant (10 to 20 percent) increase in the LEO debris environment,” (LEO stands for low Earth orbit).

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OB Bureau
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