Tank Russian missiles exploded in space, fallen into 65 pieces. About the explosion on the orbit announced by the U.S. military, it turned out that the exploded tank of the upper stage, which brought in a Russian space Observatory “Radioastron”.
The U.S. military reported an explosion in the tank space spent stage of a Russian rocket, which shattered into dozens of fragments. The message on it appeared on Twitter 18 squadron space surveillance air force of the United States.
The report States that the tank exploded upper stage “Fregat”, which was listed under MLS #37756 in the American military catalog of space objects and had international designation 2011-037B.
According to the military, the destruction of the tank has occurred may 8 in the period 07.02-08.51 GMT. The tank collapsed, forming a 65 the debris that are tracked by ground radar.
Thus in the message it is emphasized that the explosion stage was not associated with a collision with another space object. According to the site n2yo.com on which the tracked position of the near-earth space debris and satellites, upper stage is on an elongated orbit with a maximum distance from the Earth and 3600 minimum – 430 kilometers, a period of 127 minutes.
The launch, which was part of the remaining on-orbit upper stage, took place on 18 July 2011 from Baikonur cosmodrome that day the rocket “Zenit-2SLБ80” with the upper stage “Fregat-SB” into orbit by the Russian space radio telescope “Spektr-R” (“Radioastron”).
Tanks boosters “Frigate” is known for his explosions in orbit after launch. This so-called toroidal resettable blocks tanks “Fregat-SB”, which in deriving the payload is separated after the consumption of fuel.
The same tank that was used for launching into orbit telecommunications satellite “Angosat-1” at the end of December 2017, exploded in space in February 2018, creating more than 25 wrecks.
Versatile upper-stage rocket “Frigate” built in NPO “Lavochkin”, model “SB” in contrast to the basic toroidal tank is discharged, so that the fuel and oxidizer (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide) on Board can be increased almost twice — from 5.2 tons to 10.1.
Eighteenth squadron space surveillance USAF is engaged in the detection, tracking and identification of all artificial objects in earth orbit, its data are often the source of information on collisions or destruction of near-earth man-made objects.
So, in February 2020 American military reported the destruction in orbit of the Soviet stage of the carrier rocket “Cyclone-3” 29 years after launch. According to squadron, the destruction occurred on 12 February 2020, after the explosion�� in orbit appeared 75 separate pieces of gear.
In April of 2019 squadron tracked the destruction of the second stage of the American rocket Atlas-5 that resulted in 14 of the wreckage in space. It was about the second stage of the rocket, which was launched on 17 October 2018 and delivered in a geostationary orbit military satellite communications AEHF-4.
At the same time the European space Agency announced the destruction in orbit, the same upper stage Centaur rocket Atlas-5, whose launch took place almost 10 years ago — in September 2009. Video of the observed fragments was obtained using the Spanish Deimos Observatory Sky Survey, which specializiruetsya on tracking natural and man-made objects in near-earth space.
“Radioastron”
Radioastron — the first in the last decade, the Russian space project, focused on fundamental studies of the Universe. The telescope was launched on 18 July 2011 from the Baikonur cosmodrome rocket “Zenit” and worked until January 2019 It is on an elliptical orbit with an apogee of about 350 thousand km Over the years in orbit scientists in international cooperation, there have been several thousand observations of interesting objects in the Universe such as quasars and relativistic jets, black holes, pulsars and masers.
The results of these observations have been published many scientific articles and has made several important discoveries in astrophysics. A distinctive feature of the mission was a repeated excess of the machine design life.
