Washington: A privately owned US communication satellite
collided with a defunct Russian satellite in orbit posing a risk
to the international space station. A NASA official said that
this is the first such incident in space. It was the first such
collision in space, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said on
Wednesday, adding that the magnitude of the accident was still
unknown. NASA will take weeks to determine the full magnitude of
the crash, which occurred on Tuesday nearly 790 km over Siberia,
at an altitude used by satellites that monitor weather and carry
telephone communications among other things. According to an
e-mail alert issued by NASA on Wednesday, Russia's Cosmos 2251
satellite slammed into the Iridium 33 satellite at 1155 hrs IST
(0455 GMT). The incident was observed by the US Defence
Department's Space Surveillance Network, which later tracked two
large clouds of debris. "This is the first time we have ever had
two intact spacecraft accidentally run into each other," said
chief scientist of NASA