ISLAMABAD – The space habitat development company Bigelow Aerospace tweetedon Tuesday that two inoperative satellites, the US’s Genesis II andRussia’s Soviet-era Cosmos 1300, might collide.
While the odds of a crash are only 5.6 percent, Bigelow Aerospace, theowner of Genesis II, says it’s another troubling sign that Earth’s orbit isbecoming dangerously crowded.
Bigelow Aerospace followed up with a warning about the rapid proliferationof space junk, a problem raised earlier when one of SpaceX’snumerous StarLink satellites nearly crashed into a European Space Agencyobservation satellite.
“This proliferation, if not controlled in number, could become verydangerous to human life in low Earth orbit,” Bigelow Aerospace tweeted.
Read Top Stories
The Bigelow Aerospace Genesis-2 module, designed to test the technology ofcommercial space stations, was launched into orbit in June 2007 and workedfor about 2.5 years. The developer planned to create a commercial spacestation from transformable modules.
The Soviet-era satellite Cosmos-1300 was launched in August 1981 as part ofthe Tselina-D military space-based radio surveillance system.
