So much for the big sky principle

Colliding satellites....

Here is a cool animation of the collision which I guess was inevitable when you consider how much is up there.

http://i39.tinypic.com/2vbk75z.gif

The collision which occurred on February 10th, approximately 800 km over northern Siberia, involved a US Iridium commercial satellite(Iridium 33) , which was launched in 1997, and a Russian satellite (Kosmos 2251) launched in 1993 and believed to be non functioning. Each satellite weighed well over 1,000 pounds. The ISS is safe at present from the approximately 500 pieces debris as it is in orbit only 350km above the Earht.

This is the fifth spacecraft/satellite collision to occur in space, but the other four were all fairly minor by comparison.