Multi-stage fly-throughs with narration. Each tour filters the catalogue, moves the camera, and walks you through the story behind the objects.
Cinematic reconstructions of historical collision and ASAT events. Watch the approach, impact, and resulting debris cloud.
At 16:56 UTC on 10 February 2009, an active Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian Cosmos military satellite converged over Siberia at 789 km altitude. Neither operator had warning. They struck at 11.7 km/s — roughly ten times the speed of a rifle bullet. In under a second, two intact spacecraft became over 2,300 trackable fragments still in orbit today.
On 11 January 2007, China launched a kinetic kill vehicle that destroyed its own Fengyun-1C weather satellite at 865 km altitude. The test was conducted without prior notice to any other spacefaring nation. It produced more than 3,500 trackable fragments and an estimated 35,000 pieces larger than 1 cm — the most debris ever created by a single event. At 865 km, atmospheric drag is negligible. Most fragments will remain in orbit for centuries.
At 02:47 UTC on 15 November 2021, Russia destroyed its own defunct Cosmos-1408 reconnaissance satellite with a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile. The satellite was destroyed at ~480 km — inside the ISS orbital band. The station's seven crew members were given three hours' warning and told to shelter in their Soyuz and Dragon return capsules. The ISS passed through the debris cloud multiple times in the following hours. Over 1,500 fragments were catalogued.
On 27 March 2019, India destroyed its own Microsat-R experimental satellite at ~283 km altitude using a kinetic interceptor — becoming only the fourth nation to demonstrate a direct-ascent ASAT capability. Prime Minister Modi announced the test live on television. At 283 km, atmospheric drag is powerful: most of the 130 tracked fragments re-entered within weeks to months. Today a handful of the slowest-decaying pieces remain — a rare case of a debris cloud actively disappearing from the catalog.