[meteorite-list] Russian Run-in with Space Debris?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:52:06 2004
Message-ID: <200208071536.IAA02838_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://space.com/news/astronotes-1.html

Russian Run-in with Space Debris?
space.com
August 7, 2002

Space surveillance experts at the U.S. Air Force Space Command near
Colorado Springs, Colorado noticed a new object near Russia's Cosmos
539. It appears a chunk of space junk knocked off a piece of the
30-year old spacecraft. Radar scans back in May first detected the
fragment breaking free of the Russian satellite.

The busted off piece shot through space, lasting only 43 days before
dropping into Earth's atmosphere. That's a hasty retreat from an
orbit so high that satellite reentry normally requires thousands of
years. Cosmos 539's orbit did change a tad, seemingly tied to being
smacked by a small object.

Either a meteoroid or orbital debris is the likely high-speed
intruder. But given the high-altitude whereabouts of the Russian
satellite, the amount of small-sized orbital debris is roughly 10
times that of meteoroids. The incident is reported in a new issue of
a NASA Johnson Space Center newsletter dedicated to orbital debris
Received on Wed 07 Aug 2002 11:36:44 AM PDT