When Satellites Collide

It Wasn't Like a Crash on the LIE that Wreckers Cleared

By Dan Rattiner

Many years ago, I went to the wedding of a friend of a friend. It was an interesting affair for two reasons. One was that it was held in the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota, which soon after was completely inundated downtown by a flood that finished the city for the next two years. It was amazing to me after getting home to see on TV the downtown underwater after I had been there so shortly before, especially since the wedding took place aboard a paddleboat that plied down the very twin river forks that would later be the cause of this destruction.

The other reason this wedding was interesting was that the bride was a lawyer who had gotten her doctorate in space law. It was, at that time, a fledgling field, about who owned the moon or if it was possible to own a planet, or who had the right of way or whether there was legal liability in outer space. She was in North Dakota because the American NORAD guided missile center was in Minot, North Dakota. If you were in space law, this was the place to be.

I thought of her last Tuesday because at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, two space satellites circling the Earth collided over Siberia and shattered into millions of pieces. The details of this fascinated me because they indicate just how far we have not come in the 15 years since that wedding.

One satellite was an American made Iridium telephone transmitting satellite about the size of a Smart Car, about 12 feet long and, with its wings spread, about 10 feet wide. It weighed 1,200 pounds and it was owned by Iridium Satellite, out of Bethesda, Maryland, and was one of 66 such satellites that keep Iridium telephone customers in touch with one another by satellite around the world.

Nobody was on board.

The other satellite was a Russian military communication satellite known as a Kosmos-2251, out of service and not in use anymore. It was about the size of a Toyota Corolla, it was built and launched in 1993 and it had become disabled in 1995. No one was on board that either.

Since the crash, Russia has expressed outrage that the American satellite simply plowed into the Russian satellite, which was, figuratively, parked by the side of the road with its flashers on.

A Russian web site, without reporting on whether anybody was on board, or alongside, changing a flat tire, commented this way about what they referred to as a "smashup."

"The Maryland-based Iridium Company denies responsibility for this week's collision between U. S. and Russian communication satellites. Meanwhile, Russian officials wonder why U. S. satellite experts didn't prevent the crash by adjusting the working satellite's orbit. They speculate it was due to 'computer failure or human error.'"

Turns out, this is not just idle posturing or propaganda by the Russians. At the Houston International Space Station, a spokesman said ruefully that the orbits of satellites are often adjusted by remote control from the ground, where they cause little puffs of air from tiny jets on board to steer satellites around space debris and back into regular orbits.

There were no witnesses to the accident. There were, however, many witnesses to the result of the accident, which sent millions of pieces either up into higher orbits or down into lower orbits. Iridium observed that part of its phone system went down and that the satellite was not answering. That afternoon, they phoned NASA about it. NASA, of course, had already noticed that there were a whole lot of new objects up there and was looking into it. Using telescopes, they figured out that the accident happened 490 miles above the Earth.

There is considerable concern about the space station. The space station orbits 215 miles above the Earth and there could be a problem if the space station encountered downward drifting debris, although it is officially reckoned as "unlikely." There are three people, all Russians, up in the space station.

"What we're doing now is trying to quantify that risk," said Nicholas L. Johnson, who is the chief scientist for NASA. "That's a work in progress. It could take days for us to determine the size and number of pieces of debris."

When asked, he guessed there would be many, many dozens of pieces of debris, if not hundreds. But then, apparently realizing there were really millions of pieces, he suggested that there might be pieces so small they couldn't be seen.

"We can dodge the big ones," he said. "It's the small things you can't see that are the ones that can do you harm."

One of the larger concerns about this situation is what one official called the "ball break" effect. To start a game of pool, one puts all the balls in a triangle at one end of the table and hits them with a shot by the cue ball from the other end of the table. Balls go everywhere. And some balls hit other balls.

In this case, however, everything that might get hit breaks apart and sends more debris out to get hit. Because of the fact this is in a near vacuum, things could get much worse rather than just come to a halt as in pool. Up around 800 miles, there are hundreds of old satellites finished with their work that have been nudged into an orbit called the "buried" orbit. Some are old American Naval satellites, with nuclear reactors on board. Others are old Soviet satellites, also with nuclear reactors on board.

At least there is no danger to those of us here on Earth. In a hundred years or more, debris will eventually drift downward into the Earth's atmosphere and burn up before hitting the planet. It might be pretty to watch that happen. But this is no way to get rid of space collisions.

There are no police up there to check licenses and to give out tickets. There are no ambulances or fire trucks, no volunteer firemen putting out red traffic cones to detour traffic. There's no wrecker, with two guys with brush brooms on board to sweep up the debris while the wrecker hauls up the mangled vehicles to the back of a flatbed. There's no insurance companies you can call to sort out who is to pay to have the fender and body people knock out the dents or pay the medical bills or reimburse the weeping survivors and family members and give them the proper compensation. There are also no seatbelt laws, no traffic lights, no points for speeding and no DWI. There's also no law against texting while driving.

It's a whole new world up there. And nobody's paying the slightest bit of attention to it. Where is my friend's friend when we need her?

Back to Contents