Western Australia figures
The breakup of the Soviet-era Meteor 2-7 satellite in Earth orbit has created a debris cloud that poses a risk to other spacecraft. Space-tracking company LeoLabs detected the fragments as they passed over its radar station in Western Australia. The weather satellite, launched 45 years ago, had long been out of service.
Russian RESURS timeline
In a post on X, LeoLabs noted that this was the latest link in a chain of events over the past 6 months, pointing to a worrying trend for space safety. The satellite was at an average altitude of 856 km; objects at this altitude can remain in orbit for hundreds, even thousands of years unless a collision occurs. The debris from the Russian RESURS-P1 satellite, which exploded in 2024, forced ISS astronauts to take shelter.
US space measurements
The debris from the satellite, which broke into more than 180 pieces at an altitude of roughly 355 km, eventually burned up in the atmosphere. According to the US Space Surveillance Network, low orbit contains tens of thousands of objects larger than 10 centimeters and up to 200 thousand objects between 1 and 10 cm in size. Experts warn of the Kessler effect, which could set off a chain of collisions.