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Friday, February 13, 2009

Situation Normal

Iridium says they had no warning about the danger to their satellite lost a couple days ago. Says the company:

"Iridium didn't have information prior to the collision to know that the collision would occur," said Liz DeCastro, a company spokeswoman. "If the organizations that monitor space had that information available, we are confident they would have shared it with us."


We did not predict the Russian satellite as colliding with the Iridium satellite. The situation was normal. Normal until the Russian satellite smashed the Iridium satellite.

I know we can't track every speck in space, but I think we would have been tracking a one-ton atomic-powered satellite that is known to be "out of control."

So why didn't we predict it as coming dangerously close to the Iridium satellite?

Did it change course too late for Iridium to be warned? If so, was the Russian satellite under command when it did that and not out of control?

Iridium says they were in dark before the orbital crash. Why is that?