It’s now been five weeks since the Russian ASAT demonstration that struck the Cosmos 1408 satellite, causing enormous amounts of new space debris to be generated in a heavily utilized altitude band in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
In Part II of our analysis on this event, we considered the plausible…
In trying to make sense of the debris counts from Cosmos 1408 over the last few days, a few characteristics have been difficult to reconcile. For instance, on the day of the ASAT test Jonathan McDowell noted the potential posigrade tendency of the resulting debris fragments and associated implications.
By now we’ve all heard the news that none of us wanted to hear — a significant breakup occurred in space, and was intentionally performed by Russia via direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missile strike against one of their own defunct satellites. …
As most folks know, we at LeoLabs are focused on tracking objects in the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) regime. And with good reason. LEO is where the exponential growth is occurring in space, with an upcoming order of magnitude increase in the number of operational satellites across multiple large constellations…
LeoLabs is pleased to announce that we will provide our Launch and Early Orbit tracking service to SpaceX’s customers as part of their SmallSat Rideshare Program. Drawing on the success of providing this service to satellite operators on the Transporter-1 mission, LeoLabs will provide this support to users for the…
Last week, LeoLabs officially unveiled the latest radar in its global network — the Costa Rica Space Radar. This post will take a closer look at this important addition to our operational capabilities for tracking objects in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
The Costa Rica Space Radar is located in the…
On July 12, 2020, LeoLabs detected a breakup event of a Japanese H-2A debris object (NORAD ID 43673) in space. The event was first reported by the 18th Space Control Squadron (18 SPCS) reporting an approximate breakup time of 08:44 UTC:
Upon receiving this news, the LeoLabs team rapidly…
As any experienced satellite owner-operator knows, the first hours and days following a satellite launch can often be the most precarious. It can be challenging to locate and establish initial communications with your spacecraft in a timely fashion, especially on rideshare missions where there may be multiple other operator payloads…
For the past year and a half, we’ve been hard at work maturing our capabilities to accurately identify and monitor potential collisions in LEO. We activated our internal conjunction screening service in early 2019, a first of its kind system that performs a continuous full catalog search for potential collisions…
