An old Soviet satellite broke apart and littered orbit with space debris

The old Soviet meteorological satellite Meteor 2-7 broke apart into dozens of fragments in low Earth orbit at an altitude of about 855 kilometers. The event was recorded by LeoLabs as the satellite passed over Western Australia. 

Expert Jim Shell noted that this same satellite, launched in 1981, had already broken up in March 2004.

This incident adds to a series of similar breakups of spacecraft and rocket stages in recent months and years. Experts warn that the increasing amount of space debris raises the risk of collisions and could trigger a chain reaction. The growing number of tracked objects in orbit poses a threat not only to spacecraft but also to astronauts, as happened at the Chinese Tiangong space station.

There is speculation within the space community about possible tests of anti-satellite weapons by Russia, as Russian officials—including Medvedev and Konstantin Vorontsov—have previously threatened to destroy Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, and Western intelligence agencies have reported on the development of such systems. Professor Hugh Lewis notes that due to orbital congestion, a collision involving an operational satellite will occur despite all evasive maneuvers.

Source: Space.com.

Sergey Glazyev, an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev proposed several ways to disable the Starlink satellite system used by Ukraine. Among the options they mentioned were electronic jamming, the physical destruction of satellites, the creation of space debris, and even a nuclear explosion in space.

Plans by technology and space companies to deploy computing power in orbit could open up a new market for the insurance sector. At the same time, insurers still need to learn how to assess risks that have not yet existed on a large scale.