US Air Force: exhaust Russian upper stage “Briz-M” broke apart in orbit – TASS

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22. / Correspondent. Ivan Lebedev TASS /. The spent upper stage “Briz-M” Russian rocket “Proton” in Earth orbit, falling apart, but now its fragments do not pose a real threat for telecommunications satellites. This was announced on Thursday told Tass the official representative of the Joint Space Operations Centre of the US Air Force Capt. Nicholas Mercurio. This center, located at the base of Vandenberg in California is tracking all objects in outer space, including space debris.

According to the captain Mercurio, American experts have fixed “the collapse of a portion of the space object identified as the upper stage “Breeze-M” 20 January “. Now they are monitored for at least 10 fragments that are at geosynchronous orbit. “At the moment it has no effect on any other devices,” – said the representative of the center.

“Companies-satellite operators will be informed in the case of convergence of debris with existing satellites”, – said the captain of Mercury a brief commentary broadcast by e-mail. According to him, fragments of “Breeze-M” will be listed in the catalog of “space debris”, as soon as be able to collect them all the necessary information.

The representative of the Joint Space Operations Centre also reported that, according to American data, break into pieces the upper stage “Breeze-M” has been used rocket “Proton”, which put into orbit a spacecraft for the benefit of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation 13 December 2015. As usual, this vehicle was launched from Baikonur.

A number of independent experts believe that its fragments are of particular concern, because they are in geosynchronous orbit used by most telecommunications satellites. At the same time an expert from the American Foundation for the Secure World Brian Weeden noted that “they really improve the overall threat posed by space debris, but the likelihood that they will face some single satellite is quite small”.

The Joint Space Operations Centre USAF began monitoring objects in space since the launch of Sputnik in October 1957. Since the catalog of artificial space objects was recorded 39,000 items. Now the center is constant monitoring of 22 thousand objects in Earth orbit. About 5% of them are active devices, 8% – spent rocket stages, and the remaining 87% – fragments of various machines and the failed satellite.