Tag: Space Debris
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Power system failure likely cause of military satellite explosion
Artist’s concept of a DMSP weather satellite in orbit. Credit: U.S. Air Force The U.S. Air Force says a temperature spike in the power system of a nearly 20-year-old weather satellite may have led to the spacecraft’s explosion in orbit, scattering more than 40 fragments of debris that could be flying around Earth for decades.…
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Did two more Iridium satellites collide with space debris?
An Iridium satellite on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Credit: Image by Eric Long, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution Two mystifying incidents last year involving separate Iridium communications satellites have experts wondering whether the spacecraft collided with tiny fragments of space junk. Both satellites kept…