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Blast leaves more junk littering Earth's orbit | The Nation | The Australian

CHINA'S successful test of an anti-satellite weapon has added millions of pieces of space junk to the clutter of debris already circling Earth. If the ageing Chinese weather satellite was destroyed at an orbit of roughly 850km, as experts believe, the debris poses a significant threat to commercial and scientific satellites. ".

The Feng Yun 1C (FY-1C) satellite was in a popular orbit and debris can damage spacecraft. According to NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office, space junk circles the planet at 8km per second in low Earth orbits, below 2000km. But the average impact speed of debris when it strikes another object is roughly 10km per second, so even a small piece of debris will hit with great force. Before the Chinese test, the ODPO was tracking 9949 pieces of debris larger than 10cm. These include 3049 operational and retired satellites, about 1500 spent booster rockets and roughly 4000 fragments from accidental or planned explosions.
Blast leaves more junk littering Earth's orbit | The Nation | The Australian

So China can soon take on star-wars. Living on or leaving the planet may become impossible in the process but at least we can make big wars and live from those. hummm... maybe not...


space, military