Anyone who doubted that space is being established as a military domain as well as a commercial one would have had cause to think again on November 15. 2021 as the Russian Federation launched a direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missile against one of its own Cosmos 1408 satellites. The interception took place 530 miles above the earth in the band called low Earth orbit (LEO). The successful destruction and disintegration of the satellite generated more than 1,500 trackable pieces of debris, with thousands more much-smaller pieces now hurtling around Earth's orbit with the potential to damage any satellite the debris encounters. According to NASA, "the average impact speed of orbital debris with another space object will be approximately six miles per second. Consequently, collisions with even a small piece of debris will involve considerable energy."
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