← Signals
Recordedyearscience

Kessler and Cour-Palais publish the collision cascade argument

Two NASA researchers set out, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the statistical case that collisions between artificial satellites would themselves become the dominant source of new debris, producing a belt of fragments around the Earth. The paper was written when the catalogued population was a small fraction of its present size and no accidental collision between two intact satellites had ever occurred; its argument was entirely prospective, and it took thirty-one years for the collision it described to happen.

Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.

Subjects

Evidence

Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.

Recorded on The Kessler collision cascade

  1. Kessler and Cour-Palais publish the collision cascade argument
  2. The UN adopts voluntary space debris mitigation guidelines
  3. A Chinese anti-satellite test destroys the Fengyun-1C weather satellite
  4. Iridium 33 and Cosmos 2251 collide
  5. The first sixty Starlink satellites are deployed
  6. A Russian anti-satellite test destroys Cosmos 1408
  7. The FCC adopts a five-year post-mission disposal rule

Related

Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.