Satellites collide!

I was bored to the core and wanted to read something interesting. It was then I found a truly interesting article on the home page of Wikipedia. It was something about the "collision of satellites" - something that I have never heard of before! On February 10 this year, two satellites in orbit - Iridium 33 and Kosmos-2251 collided with each other directly while orbiting the earth. This direct collision was so severe that both were completely destroyed and more than 500 pieces of debris were tracked by U.S. Space Surveillance Network.

The Iridium 33 was launched on September 14, 1997 and was operational till the collision. The Kosmos-2251 was launched on June 16, 1993 and was retired before several years.

Hope that the debris produced by this collision won't pose a threat to the other spacecrafts and upcoming launches.

An artist's depiction!