A Russian satellite was just metres from hitting a Nasa counterpart in a “shocking” near-miss that could have put lives at risk, the US space agency has claimed.
Pam Melroy, the deputy administrator of Nasa, said experts had been “really scared” by the incident on Feb 28 because it was not possible to manoeuvre either satellite.
The narrow escape happened when the defunct Russian spy satellite Cosmos 2221 drifted uncomfortably close to Nasa’s Timed (Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics) satellite, which monitors Earth’s atmosphere.
Colonel Melroy, a former astronaut, said that if the satellites had collided it would have led to thousands of bullet-fast pieces of debris shooting around Earth and warned the…
