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Earlier today, US private company Bigelow Aerospace was informed by the US Air Force that its Genesis II spacecraft had a poor chance of crashing into a dead Russian spy satellite.
The announcement of the potential orbital burst was sent via Bigelow Aerospace Twitter account.
"Today, the US Air Force has informed us that there is a 5.6% chance that Genesis II collides with the deadly Russian Cosmos 1300 satellite in 15 hours," the report said. tweet. "Although it is of relatively low probability, it is clear that the low Earth orbit is becoming more and more congested."
Bigelow Aerospace posted his tweet at 1:30 pm AND. The collision, if it were to occur, would take place around 4:05 am tomorrow (September 18, 2019), according to the company.
"Future space space stations will face this reality and this danger," continued Bigelow in a tweet later. "This proliferation, if it is not controlled in numbers, could become very dangerous for human life in low Earth orbit."
Genesis II is an experimental habitat entered space in 2007. It was removed from the market in 2011 after the failure of its maneuvering system, which lasted two years longer than expected, said today. A spokeswoman for Bigelow on the phone in Gizmodo. Genesis II stays in orbit but no longer collects data.
According to Bigelow spokesperson, the US Air Force told the company today that the probabilities of a potential collision of 5.6% are low enough and that the collisions are not considered dangerous or potentially significant than 10% or more. The spokeswoman said it was the first time that the US Air Force had warned the cabinet of the possibility of a collision with one of its spacecraft. Genesis II is one of two Bigelow satellites currently in orbit, the other being Genesis I.
The surveillance satellite Kosmos 1300, deceased, built and operated by the former Soviet Union, dates from 1981.
The Genesis II spacecraft is expected to desorb at some point in the 2020s. Its destruction would not be a major loss. The most important problem is that a collision would produce huge amounts of space debris, which would increase the chances of further collisions in an endless cascade of orbital destructions.
Bigelow's tweet, in addition to sharing the news, was to proclaim the company's concerns about the overcrowding of the low Earth orbit, said Bigelow's spokeswoman. "We are seeing more and more satellites in space and satellite swarms potentially involving thousands of satellites – and without limitations and licenses," she said.
Although the concerns expressed by Bigelow are certainly valid, the fact is that his own retired spaceship, which has lost its ability to maneuver, is likely to hit an old satellite that has been dead since the early 1980s, as a result of 39 "an incident does not involve anything that was launched after 2007. The spokeswoman for Bigelow said that any satellite launched by the company in the future" will have its own propulsion capability ", this which should allow him to actively avoid collisions.
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With a probability of nearly 6%, a collision is unlikely but remains difficult to envisage. In an email sent to Gizmodo, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center and satellite expert, said this "probability is much higher than usual". The Air Force informed the news agency that its Aeolus satellite had a 1 in 1,000 chance of hitting one of SpaceX's Starlink satellites.
The relatively high probability of collision between Genesis II and Cosmos 1300 may be related to the large size of the two objects, said McDowell. Potential collisions between satellites "often happen," he said, but it seems like a more serious example than usual.
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