For decades, two intact satellites slamming into each other was a thing engineers worried about on paper. On February 10, 2009, the paper caught fire.
An active American communications satellite, Iridium 33, met a defunct Russian one, Cosmos 2251, roughly 790 kilometers above Siberia. Their combined speed was around 11.7 kilometers per second. The collision was instant and total, and it left behind more than two thousand trackable fragments, plus a great many too small to catalog.
- Event: Iridium 33 / Cosmos 2251 collision
- Date: February 10, 2009
- Altitude: about 790 km
- Closing speed: about 11.7 km/s
- Result: 2,000+ trackable fragments
The opening act
This was the first accidental hypervelocity collision of two intact satellites. It is also the clearest preview we have of where a crowded orbit leads.
Every fragment from that crash is now its own high-speed hazard to everything else sharing the neighborhood. That is the Kessler Syndrome in miniature, playing out for real. Removing dead satellites before they become shrapnel is collision prevention, plain and simple, and it is the job Space Waste exists to do.
Two satellites, one bad afternoon, thousands of new problems. Better to retire the dead ones first.
Open the live tracker →Sources: 2009 satellite collision · NASA Orbital Debris Program Office