One Satellite Crash Could Upend Modern Life

Earlier this year, two satellites from two adversarial countries nearly collided while orbiting Earth at thousands of miles an hour. The first, an American spacecraft on a NASA mission to study the planet’s upper atmosphere, wasn’t built to maneuver in orbit. The second, a Russian surveillance spacecraft, was defunct, and thus uncontrollable. The only thing people on Earth could do was watch. Darren McKnight, a space-debris expert, stayed up all night on February 28, monitoring the trajectories of the satellites, which, combined, weighed several thousand pounds. More

(Source: The Atlantic - Jun 15)