How many trackable pieces of debris resulted from the 2009 crash of Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251?
Answer
Over 2,000 pieces
The collision that occurred in 2009 between the active Iridium 33 satellite and the defunct Russian Cosmos 2251 satellite represented a major milestone in accidental orbital destruction events. This high-energy impact was significant not just for involving two large, operational or recently defunct spacecraft, but for the sheer volume of resultant fragmentation. This single collision generated more than 2,000 distinct pieces of debris that were large enough to be subsequently tracked by monitoring agencies. This incident is frequently cited in discussions surrounding the potential for cascading failures in orbit, which is the core concept driving concerns related to the Kessler Syndrome.
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