Back in January, China fired a missile at one of its own weather satellites orbiting at around 520 miles overhead. The missile smashed the satellite to bits.
The test jolted the Pentagon and many of China’s neighbors. It showed that China has missile guidance systems able to essentially hit a speeding bullet (actually a satellite travels 10 times faster than the fastest bullet) at great distance.
The story doesn’t end there. The test littered the heavens with scraps of metal, even more than initially estimated. Read my recent story about the, er, fallout of this test.
Imagine taking a space walk out of the International Space Station, above, knowing that at any second a loose shard of metal might slam into you at 17,400 mph. Even a tiny orbiting fleck of aluminum has the kinetic energy of a bullet, one scientist told me.
This post does not entirely do justice to reality. The ISS is probably not in the same orbit as the satellite that the Chinese military blew up, and as such there is not going to be any space debris from that satellite threatening space walking astronauts at the ISS.
Posted by: Kevin S. | April 07, 2007 at 08:47 PM
Kevin, the space station is in a much lower orbit than the Fengyun-1C weather satellite was. But you have to remember that the debris from the Chinese satellite moved in three directions when it was shattered. Some debris went flying into much lower orbit. The debris is also in an orbit circling the polar regions, which crosses the orbit of the ISS several times an hour. So as the smaller debris goes lower over time, it does put the ISS in danger.
Posted by: Tim J | April 08, 2007 at 02:59 AM
I stand corrected. I should have read your article that you linked to. Thanks for pointing this out.
Posted by: Kevin S. | April 10, 2007 at 09:58 PM