BIZARRE EVENTS - all within a week

[Dantheman62]

Earth is ensnared today in a thick spider web of orbits. Satellites with different assignments fly at different altitudes:

U.S. space shuttles are manned satellites of Earth. They usually fly at altitudes around 200 miles above Earth. Rarely, they fly near 400 miles altitude. Russia's orbiting space station Mir is another manned satellite. It maintains its own orbit just above 200 miles altitude.

Russian and American navigation satellites guide ships at sea from 100 to 300 miles altitude.

Photography Photo-intelligence (PHOTOINT) satellites shoot clear pictures and infrared images of installations on the ground from the same altitude range. Radar images of targets on Earth's oceans are recorded at these altitudes.

Civilian photography satellites, such as the American Landsat and the French Spot, orbit at altitudes ranging from 300 to 600 miles. American NOAA and Russian Meteor weather satellites are at these same altitudes.

Spysats and military communications satellites dominate space from 600 to 1,200 miles altitude. The spysats gather electronic intelligence (ELINT), signal intelligence (SIGINT) and radar intelligence (RADINT). Hamsats also operate there.

Science Science research satellites do much of their work at altitudes between 3,000 and 6,000 miles above Earth. Their findings are radioed to Earth as telemetry data.

From 6,000 to 12,000 miles altitude, navigation satellites operate. Best known are the U.S. global-positioning system (GPS) and Russia's equivalent GLONASS satellites.

Altitude in Miles Satellite Types
100-300 shuttles, space stations, spysats, navsats, hamsats
300-600 weather sats, photo sats
600-1,200 spysats, military comsats, hamsats
3,000-6,000 science sats
6,000-12,000 navsats
22,300 (stationary) communications, broadcast, weather
250-50,000 (elliptical) early-warning, Molniya broadcast, communications, spysats, hamsats

The 1,234-pound (560-kg) Iridium 33 satellite involved in the collision was launched in 1997; the 1,984-pound (900-kg) Russian satellite was launched in 1993 and presumed non-operational. It did not have a maneuvering system, NASA said.


Iridium's spacecraft circle the Earth along a near-polar orbit once every 100 minutes and fly at a speed of about 16,832 mph (27,088 kph), the company states on its Web site.


Johnson said outdated spacecraft, rocket stages and other components break apart in space every year, but there have only been three relatively minor collisions between such objects in the last 20 years. Never before have two intact satellites crashed into one another by accident, he added.

Shortly after, our space surveillance center reported that they had observed multiple new objects in low orbit," Drey said. The U.S. Space Surveillance Network continuously tracks more than 18,000 separate man-made objects and debris at any given time, he added.