LeoLabs, a California based satellite tracking company has assumed a collision in the outer space. Two long-time nonfunctional satellites, IRAS and GGSE-4 will go very close to each other. According to their latest calculations, the collision may occur at 2339 hours GMT when these two dead crafts will be just 43 feet to 285 feet (13 to 87 meters) apart.
The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) is a heavy satellite which weighs about 1090 kg. On the other hand, the Gravity Gradient Stabilization Experiment (GGSE-4) is much lighted weighing just 85 kg. They will whiz past each other on the evening of January 29 about 560 miles (900 kilometres) above Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
However, those calculations also state that the probability of a collision between IRAS and GGSE-4 is just 0.1%. The low odds are a very good thing, considering that both will be travelling more faster than 51,500 km/h.
Jonathan McDowell is an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He monitors many of the objects circling Earth using publicly available U.S. tracking data. According to him, even if the collision happens, it will not be quite bad. However, it can be comparable to the Iridium-Kosmos collision in 2009.
Past incidents
The February 2009 crash, included the operational Iridium 33 communications satellite and a dead Russian military craft, Kosmos-2251. Till October 2009, it spawned about 1,800 pieces of trackable debris. And also many other shards too small to detect from the ground. It may be the most famous space-junk event in history. Only an infamous 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test and a similar Indian demonstration which occurred last year could compete with its popularity.
Maximum debris created by a collision between IRAS and GGSE-4 may stay in the more massive satellite’s path, a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), which takes a spacecraft over a planet’s poles. Those involve various weather and spy spacecraft, which take benefit of the regular brightness.