Kosmos 2421 (Cosmos 2421) was a Russian spy satellite launched in 2006, but began fragmenting in early 2008.
[Orbital Debris Quarterly News - Volume 12 Issue 3]
/ref> It also had the Konus-A science payload designed by Ioffe Institute
The Ioffe Physical-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (for short, Ioffe Institute, russian: Физико-технический институт им. А. Ф. Иоффе) is one of Russia's largest research centers specialized ...
to detect gamma-ray bursts. Three separate fragmentation events produced about 500 pieces of trackable debris.[ About half of those had already re-entered Earth's atmosphere by the fall of 2008.
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Satellite life span
Kosmos 2421 was launched on June 25, 2006 on a Tsyklon-2
The Tsyklon-2 (Cyclone-2), also known as Tsiklon-2 and Tsyklon-M (known as SL-11 by the United States DoD), GRAU index 11K69, was a Soviet, later Ukrainian, orbital carrier rocket used from the 1960s to the late 2000s.
The rocket had 106 launch ...
from LC90 at Baykonur. Other designations are 2006-026A and NORAD 29247.[ It is a US-PU/Legenda type satellite, and was in a 65 degree, 93 minute circular orbit 410–430 km up.][ The main body of the satellite finally re-entered and burned up on 19 August 2010.]
There have been 190 known satellite breakups between 1961 and 2006. Kosmos 2421 was one of the top ten space junk producing events up to 2012. There was estimated to be 500,000 pieces of debris in orbit at that time.[
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Space station maneuver
On August 27, 2008, the International Space Station
The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA ( ...
(ISS) fired the boosters of the Jules Verne automated transfer vehicle to avoid debris fragment 33246 from the remains of Kosmos 2421.[Orbital Debris Quarterly News - Volume 12 Issue 4]
/ref> Without a change, that piece was predicted to have a 1 in 72 chance of hitting the station.[ Kosmos 2421 had been in a higher orbit than ISS, so when ISS's apogee (high point of orbit) surpassed the debris field's perigee (low point of orbit), many fragments would cross ISS's orbit.][
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See also
* Space debris
* Fengyun-1C
On 11 January 2007, China conducted an anti-satellite missile test. A Chinese weather satellite—the FY-1C (COSPAR 1999-025A) polar orbit satellite of the Fengyun series, at an altitude of , with a mass of —was destroyed by a kinetic kill ve ...
* 2009 satellite collision
On February 10, 2009, two communications satellites—the active commercial Iridium 33 and the derelict Russian military Kosmos 2251—accidentally collided at a speed of and an altitude of above the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia. It was the fi ...
(Kosmos 2251
Kosmos-2251 (russian: Космос-2251 meaning ''Cosmos 2251''), was a Russian Strela-2M military communications satellite. It was launched into Low Earth orbit from Site 132/1 at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome at 04:17 UTC on 16 June 1993, by a Kos ...
and Iridium 33
Iridium 33 was a communications satellite launched by Russia for Iridium Communications. It was launched into low Earth orbit from Site 81/23 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 01:36 UTC on 14 September 1997, by a Proton-K rocket with a Block DM2 up ...
)
* Kosmos 954
* List of space debris producing events
References
External links
IEEE - The Growing Threat of Space Debris
The Threat of Orbital Debris and Protecting NASA Space Assets from Satellite Collisions
Kosmos satellites
Spacecraft launched in 2006
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