NASA Watched ‘Helplessly’ as 2 Satellites Acquired Perilously Shut

Final week, a NASA satellite tv for pc “virtually obtained clobbered excessive above Earth.” That is the news from Area.com, which experiences on a close to collision final Wednesday between the area company’s Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) analysis spacecraft, which has been in area finding out information since 2001, and Russia’s useless Cosmos 2221 satellite tv for pc, launched by that nation’s Protection Ministry in 1992. “Too shut for consolation,” famous satellite tv for pc monitoring firm LeoLabs of the close to miss.

• Shut name: LeoLabs says that the 2 satellites, which Quartz notes are touring at a pace of greater than 17,500mph, got here inside 65 ft of one another. Neither satellite tv for pc is ready to be maneuvered, leaving observers on Earth “with no selection however to observe helplessly, with out the flexibility to intervene” because the satellites neared one another, per the outlet.