NPR

There is up to a 20 per cent chance of a major collision between two pieces of space junk on Friday afternoon, a US company that monitors space junk from New Zealand is warning.

Californian company LeoLabs said it was monitoring two “large defunct” objects with a combined mass of 2.8 tonnes which its modelling suggested would either smash into each other or pass within just 25 metres at an altitude of 991 kilometres.

Scientists have worried since 1978 of a so-called “Kessler Syndrome” collision in space that could trigger a chain reaction taking down working satellites.



ocket Lab spokeswoman Morgan Bailey said that given the size, speed and proximity of the objects being monitored by LeoLabs “everybody in the space industry will be watching it closely with concern”.

It was too soon to say whether any collision might require Rocket Lab to change its plans to launch its 14th orbital mission which is currently scheduled to take place from the Mahia Peninsula next Wednesday, she said.

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the United States, tweeted that if a collision did occur the mess would be “very bad”.

LeoLabs built a multimillion-dollar space radar near Naseby in Central Otago last year to track hundreds of thousands of pieces of space junk.