On Tuesday, LeoLabs, a company that monitors the paths of space junk in low-Earth orbit, announced on Twitter it was tracking a potential conjunction—that’s space-speak for a mid-orbit crash—tonight between a defunct Soviet satellite and a discarded Chinese rocket stage.
We are monitoring a very high risk conjunction between two large defunct objects in LEO. Multiple data points show miss distance <25m and Pc between 1% and 20%. Combined mass of both objects is ~2,800kg.
Object 1: 19826
Object 2: 36123
TCA: Oct 16 00:56UTC
Event altitude: 991km pic.twitter.com/6yWDx7bziw— LeoLabs, Inc. (@LeoLabs_Space) October 13, 2020
“This is a potentially serious event. It is between 2 large objects and at high altitude, 991km,” former astronaut and LeoLabs co-founder Ed Lu tweeted. “If there is a collision there will be lots of debris which will remain in orbit for a long time”.
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