U.S., Russia seek cause of satellite collision

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW. Feb. 13. KAZINFORM The U.S. government is in touch with the Russian side regarding investigations into a collision between their space satellites, the U.S. State Department said Thursday.

Meetings between the two sides could be held during the course of the investigation, which could take days or longer, U.S. State Department spokesman Rob McInturff told Xinhua. But he would not confirm whether such meetings, if held, would concentrate on just the recent incident or a broader issue of satellite operation safety, or whether other governments would be invited to participate. The spokesman noted that the U.S. government was unable to confirm the cause of the collision between its Iridium 33 satellite and Russia's Cosmos 2251 on Tuesday. It remains unclear whether it was an accident or a preventable incident, he said, adding that what can be confirmed is the collision happened between an active U.S. commercial satellite and an inactive Russian satellite. McInturff said space experts at the State Department believe there is a very low risk for the debris to fall into Earth, since it would burn up while going through the Earth's atmosphere. There is also little chance that the debris could threaten the International Space Station, he said; Kazinform cites Xinhua. However, he did mention experts' comments that space is getting "increasingly congested." Currently there is no known technology that can collect inactive satellites or debris. All parties who have interest in space have to work on prevention, he added. Liz DeCastro, spokeswoman for the Maryland-based Iridium Satellite LLC, said the collision was not the result of a failure on the part of the Iridium satellite or its technology. The event has only minimal impact on Iridium's service and the Iridium constellation is healthy, she said in an email to Xinhua. Iridium Satellite LLC operates a constellation of 66 low Earth-orbiting satellites that provide voice and data services for areas not served by ground-based communication networks. However, the Russian Defense Ministry said the collision was possibly the result of a failure on the part of the U.S. Iridium satellite. The incident might have been caused by the U.S. satellite's mistaken crash into the "junk orbit," Yuri Ivanov, a Defense Ministry press official, told Xinhua. The orbit about 800 km above the Earth is called the "junk orbit," where defunct satellites from different countries gather together, he said. The Interfax news agency quoted space technology expert Igor Lisov as saying that the U.S. Iridium Satellite LLC could have prevented the incident. The U.S. side might have been unaware of, or had ignored, the possibility of the two satellites smashing into each other, he said. Itar-Tass quoted another Russian expert, who declined to give his name, as saying the debris created in the collision could threaten defunct satellites developed in the Soviet era, which were equipped with nuclear reactors. The debris is scattered in different directions and might collide with Soviet satellites drifting at a similar altitude, thus forming belts of radioactive debris, the expert said. Nuclear reactors on these satellites, which served the former Soviet Union's navy, were used to provide reliable, durable and comparatively low-cost energy for the satellites, he said. The 560-kg Iridium 33 satellite was launched by the United States in 1997, while the 900-kg Russian satellite was launched in 1993.