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US military satellite explodes above Earth - Telegraph
Also, what if something shot it down?? Or better, a country did?
A US military satellite exploded after detecting an unexplained “sudden spike in temperature”, sending dozens of chunks of debris tumbling into different orbits around Earth.Civilian company CelesTrak was first to notice the explosion of the once-secret weather satellite and the US Air Force subsequently confirmed that it had been lost.
The satellite was an ageing component of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program which the US military began developing the in the 1960s to help plan reconnaissance and surveillance missions. In 1972 the system was declassified, and data made available to civilian scientists.
The lost satellite was the 13th to be launched as part of DMSP, designated DMSP-F13, and had been in Earth orbit since 1995.
Air Force Space Command confirmed to SpaceNews.com that the “catastrophic event” came after “a sudden spike in temperature” was detected, followed by “an unrecoverable loss of attitude control”.
Kessler syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThe Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect,[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] collisional cascading or ablation cascade), proposed by the NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) is high enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade—each collision generating space debris which increases the likelihood of further collisions.[SUP][3][/SUP] One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space exploration, and even the use of satellites, unfeasible for many generations.[SUP][3][/SUP]
Also, what if something shot it down?? Or better, a country did?