Low earth orbit is not presently littered with hundreds of new pieces of space debris after two dead satellites in danger of colliding appear to have passed by each other without incident.
LeoLabs previously warned that its ground radar systems were tracking a potential “conjunction” of the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) launched in 1983 and the experimental GGSE-4 satellite launched for the U.S. Air Force in 1967. The firm estimated that the two spacecraft, which are pretty big by space junk standards, would pass within a football field of each other, if not much closer.
The odds of a collision vacillated a bit, but were at about 1 in 100, which is way, way too close for comfort by space standards.
The impact would have happened directly over the city of Pittsburgh Wednesday evening, but both amateurs and professional orbit-watchers tracking the objects from the ground at the moment of predicted collision reported no telltale signs of a crash.
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Jan Kansky, an engineer for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, captured the below video of IRAS safely sailing through the danger zone.
LeoLabs also confirmed that its radar “shows no evidence of new debris.”
So it looks like these two dead spacecraft will live to dumbly orbit another day, maybe another decade. Then again, with SpaceX and others making low-earth orbit more crowded with Starlink and other broadband constellations, this isn’t likely to be the last near-collision we hear about.
