{"id":819821,"date":"2025-01-14T10:12:14","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/14\/retired-military-weather-satellite-breaks-up\/"},"modified":"2025-01-14T10:12:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T16:12:14","slug":"retired-military-weather-satellite-breaks-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/14\/retired-military-weather-satellite-breaks-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Retired military weather satellite breaks up"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Defense Meteorological Satellite System (DMSP) spacecraft. Credit:<\/span> U.S. Air Force<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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WASHINGTON \u2014 A defunct military weather satellite has broken up in orbit and created more than 50 pieces of debris, the latest in a series of similar incidents involving that line of spacecraft.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Space Force reported Dec. 19 that it had identified a \u201clow-velocity fragmentation event\u201d involving the DMSP-5D2 F14 spacecraft. The event took place at 9:10 p.m. Eastern Dec. 18 at an altitude of 840 kilometers, but the announcement did not disclose how much debris had been created by the event.<\/p>\n

Two commercial space situational awareness companies, LeoLabs and Slingshot Aerospace, said they were also tracking the breakup event. Slingshot, in a Dec. 19 social media post<\/a>, said they believe the breakup took place before 8:15 p.m. Eastern on the 18th<\/sup>, an hour earlier than the Space Force\u2019s estimate, based on tracking from its optical ground stations.<\/p>\n

LeoLabs, in a Dec. 20 statement to SpaceNews, said its network of radars was tracking more than 50 objects from the fragmentation of DMSP-5D2 F14.<\/p>\n

The 750-kilogram satellite was launched in 1997 as part of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, operating in a sun-synchronous orbit. The spacecraft was retired in 2020 but remained in its sun-synchronous orbit.<\/p>\n

DMSP-5D2 F14 is part of a family of spacecraft that have suffered breakups in orbit. The F12 satellite broke up in October 2016<\/a>, following the breakup of F13 in February 2015<\/a>. In 2004, the F11 spacecraft broke up, creating 56 pieces of tracked debris. All the satellites had a battery assembly with a design flaw that made them vulnerable to explosion.<\/p>\n

A similar spacecraft design was used for a line of civilian polar-orbiting weather satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA-16 satellite broke up in November 2015<\/a>, followed by NOAA-17 in March 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many of those satellites broke up despite going through a \u201cpassivation\u201d process at the end of their lives, which includes draining batteries and venting fuel tanks. That process is designed to remove energy sources in a satellite that could cause it to break up long after being decommissioned.<\/p>\n

Industry experts have noted that the passivation process may not be fully effective on some older satellites designed before orbital debris mitigation practices were enacted.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJeff Foust writes about space policy, commercial space, and related topics for SpaceNews.<\/p>\n

He earned a Ph.D. in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor\u2019s degree with honors in geophysics and planetary science…\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Jeff Foust\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defense Meteorological Satellite System (DMSP) spacecraft. Credit: U.S. Air Force WASHINGTON \u2014 A defunct military weather satellite has broken up in orbit and created more than 50 pieces of debris, the latest in a series of similar incidents involving that line of spacecraft. The U.S. Space Force reported Dec. 19 that it had identified a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":819822,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,31],"tags":[5119,5125],"class_list":{"0":"post-819821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-military","8":"category-retired","9":"tag-military","10":"tag-retired"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}