US military satellites in Earth detonated assessment of the damage and the European Space Agency

In the February 3, 2015 the US Air Force weather satellite, Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 13 (DMSP-F-13), an explosion in Earth orbit. Explosion debris left flying around. Aerospace and Air Force officials said that battery failure is the cause of the explosion, and as with any foreign object satellite collision did not explode. Evaluation of debris left by the satellite due to the danger of the European Space Agency released.

 The satellite was raised as early as the 1960s, in order to be considered as part of a plan to provide about the US military operations in real-time weather information. 1972 it is decrypted, and later in 1998, it was transferred to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to cut costs from the US Air Force. This particular satellite, DMSP-F-13, launched into 800 km sun-synchronous polar orbit altitude in 1995. It was demoted to the level of backup satellite DMSP constellation once the new increase.

 Battery gives a result of their old age. This is all the old satellites pose a problem. The newer satellites have patched to prevent the occurrence of such events. Spiked suddenly just before the explosion according to telemetry, battery temperature. Explosion changed the satellite into 46 units (according to the latest statistics). ESA is able to run on it by the US Joint Space Operations Center of sharing, and concluded that the satellite debris is no longer a threat to the operation and will eventually burn these pieces of data in the Earth's atmosphere to evaluate research.

 Space Debris Office of the European Space Agency, said Holger Claudia grid, "This event is not considered significant. Number of fragments reported to be stable at this level, you can think that this is the range in the last 250 events in orbit debris within our mission - and CryoSat-2 is the closest to the height of the event - we do not want any meaningful risk, due to the incident. "

Air Force also released a statement saying, DMSP-F-13 will not affect the loss of Air Force service.