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.
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,”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.
Hopefully _sandraabullock isn’t off planet anytime soon.