Imaging of the wreckage of the Russian satellite reveals the extent of the damage

A few days ago, Russia tested the use of an anti-satellite missile system (ASAT), destroying its own Kosmos 1408 satellite. The explosion produced about 1,500 fragments that can be detected and thousands even smaller that are undetectable. All of these are in low orbit moving at thousands of kilometers per hour, posing a threat to anything in their path. It even sounded the alarm on the International Space Station, forcing astronauts to seek refuge in space capsules.

Space agencies are working feverishly to calculate the orbits of objects, and the European Union’s Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST) has created two images that reveal what happened when the Russian rocket hit the satellite.

Update: this video represents a simulation of the initial dispersion of the fragments resulting from the reported #ASAT test. The event has increased the collision risk of spacecraft in the LEO regime registered to #EUSST, hence impacting the safety of EU #space infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/iA3zRKNqr1

– EUSST (@EU_SST) November 18, 2021

The wreckage began to expand immediately after the collision, and it can be seen how close the ISS passed through them. A professor of engineering at the University of Southampton created his own image, stressing that at the time of the explosion, each fragment received a thrust that sent it to a higher or lower altitude, and each fragment moves at different speeds depending on the height of its orbit.

Although they all started together, what we see is that those with higher orbits take more time to orbit the Earth and those with shorter orbits take less time. So those that are lower move more forward than those that are higher. And that’s what makes them spread.

Final visualisation for the moment: #Cosmos1408 #SpaceDebris cloud passing over the Atlantic. Quality is not great but should give you an impression of what it would be like to pass near the cloud (YouTube version: https://t.co/0xoljxmiEU) pic.twitter.com/9s0looT6IW

— Hugh Lewis (@ProfHughLewis) November 18, 2021

The cloud of debris will continue to spread over time. Those in lower orbits will fall to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere faster, but those in higher orbits can take years, even decades. All that is needed for these “spheres” is a collision to shut down a satellite or, worse, threaten human lives on the ISS or the Chinese space station.

This will not be a temporary problem. It will affect space missions at least for her and the next decade.

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