A dead Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket body sped toward each other in space this week, but avoided a catastrophic crash on Thursday night.
LeoLabs, a company that uses radar to track satellites and debris in space, said on Tuesday that it was monitoring a “very high-risk” conjunction – an intersection in the two objects’ orbits around Earth.
The company has used its radar arrays to observe each of the two objects as they pass overhead three or four times per day since Friday.
The data suggest that the two large pieces of space junk missed each other by 8 to 43 meters (26 to 141 feet) at 8:56 pm ET on Thursday.
On Wednesday, when the estimated miss distance was just 12 meters (19 feet), LeoLabs calculated a 10 percent chance that the objects would collide.
That may seem low, but NASA routinely moves the International Space Station when the orbiting laboratory faces just a 0.001 percent (1-in-100,000) chance or greater of colliding with an object.
Since the Soviet satellite and Chinese rocket body are both defunct, nobody could move them out of each other’s way. If they did collide, an explosion roughly equivalent to detonating 14 metric tons of TNT would have sent bits of debris rocketing in all directions, according to astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
But when the rocket body passed over a LeoLabs radar just 10 minutes after the conjunction, there was only one object there – “no signs of debris,” the company tweeted.
“Bullet dodged,” McDowell said on Twitter. “But space debris is still a big problem.”
A collision would probably not have posed a danger to anybody on Earth, since the satellites are 991 kilometers (616 miles) above the ground and crossed paths above Antarctica’s Weddell Sea. But the resulting cloud of thousands of spaceship fragments would have been a hazard in Earth’s orbit.
Experts at The Aerospace Corporation had calculated much lower odds of collision: just 1 in 23 billion as of Thursday morning, with the objects projected to miss each other by about 70 meters (230 feet).
“The space-debris community is constantly warning about all these close approaches, and we’re not wrong or lying about this,” Ted Muelhaupt, who oversees The Aerospace Corporation’s space-debris analysis, told Business Insider.
“Any given one of them is a low-probability event, because space is still really big. But when you take these objects and you mix them up, sooner or later you’re going to see a payoff. By most of our models we’re overdue for another major collision.”
Space collisions make clouds of dangerous high-speed debris
Nearly 130 million bits of space junk currently surround Earth, from abandoned satellites, spacecraft that broke apart, and other missions. That debris travels at roughly 10 times the speed of a bullet, which is fast enough to inflict disastrous damage to vital equipment, no matter how small the pieces.
Such a hit could kill astronauts on a spacecraft.
Collisions between pieces of space junk make the problem worse since they fragment objects into smaller pieces.
“Each time there’s a big collision, it’s a big change in the LEO [low-Earth orbit] environment,” Dan Ceperley, the CEO of LeoLabs previously told Business Insider.
Two events in 2007 and 2009 increased the amount of large debris in low-Earth orbit by about 70 percent.
The first was a Chinese test of an anti-satellite missile, in which China blew up one of its own weather satellites. Then two years later, an American spacecraft accidentally collided with a Russian one.
“Because of that, now there’s sort of a debris belt,” Ceperley said.
India conducted its own anti-satellite missile test in 2019, and that explosion created an estimated 6,500 pieces of debris larger than an eraser.
The satellite that India blew up had a mass of less than one metric ton.
Combined, the Soviet satellite and the Chinese rocket body that just careened past each other have a mass of nearly three metric tons (2,800 kilograms). Given those large sizes, a collision could have created a significant cloud of dangerous debris.
High-risk satellite conjunctions are becoming more common
The objects did not crash, but Ceperley said that because both satellites “were decommissioned, basically nobody was keeping a close eye on them.”
The US Air Force, which tracks satellites for the government, did not notify NASA about that potential collision, the space agency told Business Insider at the time.
Experts’ warnings about space junk have only grown more urgent since that near miss.
“We are seeing recently a decided uptick in the number of conjunctions,” Dan Oltrogge, an astrodynamicist who researches orbital debris at Analytical Graphics, Inc, told Business Insider.
Oltrogge uses a software system that has been collecting and assessing conjunction data for the last 15 years. The recent uptick in orbital encounters, he added, “looks to be very well aligned with the new large-constellation spacecraft that have been launched.”
The large constellations he’s referring to are fleets of internet satellites that companies like SpaceX, Amazon, and OneWeb are planning to launch. In total, the companies plan to launch more than 100,000 satellites by the end of the decade. SpaceX has already rocketed nearly 800 new satellites into Earth’s orbit since May 2019.
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A debris disaster could cut off our access to space
If the space-junk problem were to get extreme, a chain of collisions could spiral out of control and surround Earth in an impassable field of debris. This possibility is known as a Kessler event, after Donald J. Kessler, who worked for NASA’s Johnson Space Centre and calculated in a 1978 paper that it could take hundreds of years for such debris to clear up enough to make spaceflight safe again.
“It is a long-term effect that takes place over decades and centuries,” Muelhaupt told Business Insider in January. “Anything that makes a lot of debris is going to increase that risk.”
The sheer number of objects in Earth’s orbit may already be having a Kessler-like effect – a risk that Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck described last week.
“This has a massive impact on the launch side,” he told CNN Business, adding that rockets “have to try and weave their way up in between these [satellite] constellations.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
