A Russian anti-satellite test destroys Cosmos 1408
A direct-ascent interceptor destroyed a defunct Soviet-era satellite at an altitude of roughly 480 kilometres, generating on the order of fifteen hundred catalogued fragments and a much larger untracked cloud. The International Space Station crew sheltered in their return vehicles as the debris field passed. Coming after two decades of voluntary mitigation guidelines, the test showed both the limits of the voluntary regime and the fact that the largest single-event contributions to the debris population have been deliberate acts by states, not commercial accidents.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Orbital debris · phenomenon · not located
- International Space Station · space station · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
ESA Annual Space Environment Report
Supports the catalogued and modelled debris population magnitudes, the altitude dependence of orbital decay, and the fragment contributions of the 2007 Fengyun-1C test, the 2009 Iridium–Cosmos collision and the 2021 Cosmos 1408 test. V55 verification basis: esa.int was refused by the network egress proxy in this session and no search was available, so counts are given as ranges and no edition-specific number is quoted.
European Space Agency, Space Debris Office · Partly verified
ESA Space Debris Office, ESA Annual Space Environment Report, Darmstadt, annual series
Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space
Establishes voluntary, non-binding debris mitigation expectations including removal of low-Earth-orbit spacecraft within twenty-five years of mission end. V55 verification basis: the guidelines were not retrieved in this session; the adoption year and the twenty-five-year expectation are stated from author knowledge.
United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs · 2007 · Partly verified
UN COPUOS Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines, adopted 2007, drawing on the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee guidelines
Recorded on Orbital debris
- Kessler and Cour-Palais publish the collision cascade argument
- The first paying private visitor reaches the International Space Station
- The UN adopts voluntary space debris mitigation guidelines
- A Chinese anti-satellite test destroys the Fengyun-1C weather satellite
- Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 collide
- The first sixty Starlink satellites are deployed
- A Russian anti-satellite test destroys Cosmos 1408
- The FCC adopts a five-year post-mission disposal rule
- NASA contracts for a vehicle to deorbit the International Space Station
- International Space Station operations are planned to end
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- NASA contracts for a vehicle to deorbit the International Space Station · 2024-06
- International Space Station operations are planned to end · 2030 (planned)
- The FCC adopts a five-year post-mission disposal rule · 2022-09-29
- The first sixty Starlink satellites are deployed · 2019-05-24
- Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 collide · 2009-02-10
- A Chinese anti-satellite test destroys the Fengyun-1C weather satellite · 2007-01-11
- The UN adopts voluntary space debris mitigation guidelines · 2007
- The first paying private visitor reaches the International Space Station · 2001-04-28