A 1988 U.S. spy satellite nicknamed after Farrah Fawcett blew apart in orbit

This is a strong reminder that dealing with accumulating space junk is becoming a more urgent issue.

Was this perhaps a space weapons test of some sort?

"The debris is circling 480 miles up, in a lane shared by at least 200 other satellites."

"... The spacecraft, known as USA 32 or Farrah III, was launched by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in 1988. Its mission, which was only fully declassified earlier this year, was to intercept Soviet radar and radio signals from space, according to Futura.

The cylindrical spacecraft, whose shape has been described as a giant "tuna can," likely stopped functioning decades ago and has been silently circling Earth ever since. (It was nicknamed after actor Farrah Fawcett, in line with the NRO's former custom of naming its satellites after famous figures from the 1970s and '80s.)

On Sept. 17, Space-Track — the satellite observation arm of the U.S. Space Force — announced that USA 32 suffered a sudden "fragmentation" event four days earlier, on Sept. 13. This essentially means the spacecraft exploded, potentially breaking apart into dozens, hundreds or even thousands of pieces. ..."

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 - Join The Flyover

US Cold War-era spy satellite explodes above Earth — and nobody knows why

Farrah Fawcett (Source)

Currently 2.8 days to a low orbit collision disaster according to a new CRASH clock

Bad news! Is the low orbit space becoming overcrowded? Then there is already all the existing space junk floating. Questions like this were frequently raised during the past several decades. Like questions about space junk.

I have just blogged here about the debris dangers to air traffic caused by the recent explosion of the SpaceX Starship.

Recent news suggest there are plans to build data centers in space and so on.

"... Calculations show that, across all low-Earth orbit mega-constellations, a "close approach," defined as two satellites passing by each at less than 1km separation, occurs every 22 seconds. For Starlink alone, that number is once every 11 minutes. Another known metric of Starlink is that, on average, each of the thousands of satellites have to perform 41 maneuvers per year to avoid running into other objects in their orbit. ..."

From the abstract:

"The number of objects in orbit is rapidly increasing, primarily driven by the launch of megaconstellations, an approach to satellite constellation design that involves large numbers of satellites paired with their rapid launch and disposal. While satellites provide many benefits to society, their use comes with challenges, including the growth of space debris, collisions, ground casualty risks, optical and radio-spectrum pollution, and the alteration of Earth's upper atmosphere through rocket emissions and reentry ablation.
There is substantial potential for current or planned actions in orbit to cause serious degradation of the orbital environment or lead to catastrophic outcomes, highlighting the urgent need to find better ways to quantify stress on the orbital environment.

Here we propose a new metric, the CRASH Clock, that measures such stress in terms of the time it takes for a catastrophic collision to occur if there are no collision avoidance manoeuvres or there is a severe loss in situational awareness. Our calculations show the CRASH Clock is currently 2.8 days, which suggests there is now little time to recover from a wide-spread disruptive event, such as a solar storm. This is in stark contrast to the pre-megaconstellation era: in 2018, the CRASH Clock was 121 days."

2.8 days to disaster: Why we are running out of time in low earth orbit

An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions (open access)

RSO = resident space object

Kessler Syndrome Space Debris Threatens Satellites

Recommendable! Over the past several decades many articles have been written about the dangers of accumulating space junk in critical low earth orbits.

This article stresses the risks of small particles and pieces of which there are many more, but they are also more difficult to observer and track!

Cleaning space trash may become fast an issue to be solved by humanity!

"... SpaceX’s Starlink satellites maneuvered around possible debris impacts 144,404 times over the first half of 2025. That’s a collision warning every couple of minutes, night and day, for six months straight—three times the rate of the previous six months. ..."

Kessler Syndrome Space Debris Threatens Satellites - IEEE Spectrum "In some orbits, the Kessler syndrome is already underway"

The first-ever mission to pull a dead rocket out of space has just begun

Good news! Amazing stuff!

"More than 9,000 metric tons of human-made metal and machinery are orbiting Earth, including satellites, shrapnel, and the International Space Station. But a significant bulk of that mass comes from one source: the nearly a thousand dead rockets that have been discarded in space since the space age began.

Now, for the first time, a mission has begun to remove one of those dead rockets. Funded by the Japanese space agency JAXA, a spacecraft from the Japanese company Astroscale was launched on Sunday, February 18, by the New Zealand firm Rocket Lab and is currently on its way to rendezvous with such a rocket in the coming weeks. It’ll inspect it and then work out how a follow-up mission might be able to pull the dead rocket back into the atmosphere. If it succeeds, it could demonstrate how we could remove large, dangerous, and uncontrolled pieces of space junk from orbit—objects that could cause a monumental disaster if they collided with satellites or spacecraft.  ..."

"After an excellent start to on-orbit operations, Astroscale Japan has begun the rendezvous operations phase of its ADRAS-J mission today, February 22 at approximately 11:00 am UTC. In this phase, the operations team based in Japan and the UK will use ADRAS-J’s propulsion system to start maneuvering towards the client orbit. This initial rendezvous phase requires careful planning of several orbit raising maneuvers to ensure accurate, precise and safe approach to the client.

Rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) are fundamental for any future on-orbit servicing, ensuring the safe and secure approach of servicer spacecraft to client spacecraft and other objects such as space debris. ADRAS-J is the world’s first attempt to safely approach and characterize an existing piece of large debris through RPO. Specifically, ADRAS-J is designed to rendezvous with an unprepared Japanese H2A upper stage rocket body, measuring approximately 11 meters in length, 4 meters in diameter, and weighing approximately 3 tons. ..."

The first-ever mission to pull a dead rocket out of space has just begun | MIT Technology Review Astroscale’s ADRAS-J spacecraft will inspect a dead Japanese rocket in orbit—a major moment in space-junk removal.

Astroscale’s ADRAS-J Mission Starts Rendezvous Operations

What is space junk? And how dangerous is it

Recommendable!

"... there are nearly 30,000 pieces—and that number only includes the pieces that are trackable. As space debris accumulates, it poses a growing challenge to space travel and exploration. ...
Formally known as orbital debris, space junk can be bits and pieces of inactive satellites, the rockets that carry them into space, debris from missiles, and detritus left behind by astronauts. Space debris can be as large as a school bus (like the inactive Envisat satellite, launched in 2002) or as small as paint chips. (As we’ll see, just because a piece of space junk is tiny doesn’t mean it’s harmless.) ...

Debris is accumulating in space at an alarming rate. Since space exploration began [about 1957-1961], more than 15,000 satellites have been launched. Now rocket launches take place more than three times per week, many deploying multiple satellites. And every new launch has the potential to generate more junk. In the year 2000, there were around 8,000 trackable pieces of debris in space. By 2019, there were roughly 20,000. Now, just four years later, there are nearly 30,000 pieces of junk larger than a softball floating in space. ...

Space junk can be dangerous because anything orbiting Earth is moving fast: debris in space travels at roughly 10 kilometers per second. That’s about 300 times faster than the maximum speed on most US highways. And since both objects in a collision would be moving fast, the relative speed would be even higher. A collision with a large object going that fast is obviously dangerous, but even junk as tiny as a paint fleck can be a problem.

Here are some examples of the damage space junk can do:

A ten-centimeter object—the size of a large bagel—could break an average satellite into pieces upon impact. There are roughly 30,000 similarly sized objects in space (including space junk and naturally occurring debris from comets or asteroids).

A one-centimeter object—the size of a Cheerio—could puncture the protective shields covering the International Space Station (ISS). In space, there are approximately 670,000 objects larger than a Cheerio.

A one-millimeter object—the size of a pencil point—could destroy a spacecraft’s ability to power up or to reach a certain altitude upon impact. There are 170 million objects larger than that in space. ..."

What is space junk? | McKinsey Space junk refers to fragments left behind in space. Most space junk is debris from rocket-launching material and disused satellites.

First-Ever Fine Issued by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Over satellite Space Junk

You can bet, there will be more fines issued in the future! 😊

According to Google Bard: "According to the satellite tracking website "Orbiting Now", there are 7,702 active satellites orbiting Earth as of May 4, 2023. This number is constantly changing, as new satellites are launched and old ones are decommissioned.

The majority of these satellites are in low Earth orbit (LEO), which is between 100 and 1,200 miles above the Earth's surface. LEO satellites are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, navigation, and Earth observation."

"US authorities said they have issued a "breakthrough" first-ever fine over space debris, slapping a $150,000 penalty on a TV company that failed to properly dispose of a satellite.

On Monday [10/1/2023] the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) came down on Dish for "failure to properly deorbit" a satellite called EchoStar-7, in orbit since 2002. ..."

First-Ever Fine Issued Over Space Junk : ScienceAlert