It’s funny to think that until 50 years ago, there wasn’t anything orbiting our planet except for our big old Moon. Nowadays, it’s pretty crowded. So, I guess this was pretty much inevitable (although you’d still think there’s a lot of ‘space’ up there): “Satellites Collide“:
Scientists are keeping a close eye on orbital debris created when two communications satellites — one American, the other Russian — smashed into each other hundreds of miles above the Earth.
NASA said it will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of the unprecedented crash and whether any other satellites or even the Hubble Space Telescope are threatened.
The collision, which occurred nearly 500 miles over Siberia on Tuesday, was the first high-speed impact between two intact spacecraft, NASA officials said.
At Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait has calculated that impact speed was probably around 1.5km/sec…not extremely fast in terms of spaceflight (the satellites were basically going in the same direction), but still fairly impressive for two vehicles weighing around a ton each.
On a tangent, if you want to watch and track satellites yourself – and I recommend spotting a bright Iridium flare sometime – visit the most-excellent Heaven’s Above website, which will give you precise viewing times for your location.
