Space officials in Russia and the United States are tracking hundreds of pieces of debris that were spewed into space when a US satellite collided with a defunct Russian military satellite.
The crash, which Russian officials said took place on Tuesday at about 1700 Irish time above northern Siberia, is the first publicly known satellite collision and has raised concerns about the safety of the manned International Space Station.
The collision happened in an orbit heavily used by satellites and other spacecraft and the US Strategic Command, the arm of the Pentagon that handles space, said countries might have to manoeuvre their craft to avoid the debris.
"The collision of these two space apparatuses happened by chance and these two apparatuses have been destroyed," Major-General Alexander Yakushin, first deputy commander of Russia's Space Forces said.
"The fragments pose no danger whatsoever to Russian space objects," he said. When asked if the debris posed a danger to other nations' space craft, he said: "As for foreign ones, it is not for me say as it is not in my competency."
The collision between the Iridium Satellite LLC-operated satellite and the Russian Cosmos-2251 military satellite occurred at about 485 miles (780 km) above the Russian Arctic.
That is an altitude used by satellites that monitor weather, relay communications and perform scientific observations.
Countries with satellites in space will have to play "dodgeball" for decades to avoid debris from the collision, a top US military officer said today.
"My worry is that that debris field is going to be up there for a while," said Gen James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former head of the military's space operations. "So we're going to have to play a little bit of dodgeball for many tens of years to come," he said.
The US Joint Space Operations Center was tracking 500 to 600 new pieces of debris, some as small as 10 cm across, in addition to the 18,000 or so other man-made objects it previously catalogued in space, he said.
Russian Space Forces said it was monitoring debris that was spread over altitudes between 500 km and 1300 km above earth.
The priority is guarding the International Space Station, which orbits at 350 km, substantially below the collision altitude. One Russian and two US astronauts are currently aboard the station.
The orbit of the ISS can be changed by controllers from Earth but even a tiny piece of debris can cause significant damage to the space station as it travels at 8 km per second.