(ORDO NEWS) — The Russian Okno-M complex, which is part of the Space Monitoring Center, has recorded 30,000 moving objects since the beginning of the year, indicating an increase in space activity compared to 2020, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday.
“For four months in 2021, the Russian optical-electronic system for detecting space objects Okno-M, located in the Sanglok mountains (Pamir ridge) in Tajikistan at an altitude of 2200 meters above sea level, recorded the movement of about 30,000 space objects,” the statement says. ministry statement.
This is a significant increase over the previous year, when the system tracked a total of 25,000 space objects, according to the ministry.
The system automatically tracks and controls artificial space objects at altitudes from 120 km to 50,000 km, the ministry said. It allows observing the movement of objects “the size of a tennis ball” over low earth orbit, including satellites in medium earth, geostationary and high earth orbits, the ministry said.
Commentary: Unfortunately, the Ministry of Defense does not specify exactly which objects are being discussed. Are they artificial satellites, asteroids, space debris or unidentified space objects?
The construction of the Okno-M complex began in 1979, and it was put into operation in 1999. Since then, the system has collected data on more than 12.5 million space objects, detected more than 7,500 new objects in high orbit, and monitored the launch of about 800 spacecraft into orbit.
Commentary: 12.5 million objects in earth orbit. Of these, 7,500 new ones were discovered with 800 fixed orbital launches. The rest of the objects, what are they? No answer.
The complex consists of modern optoelectronic stations for detecting, monitoring and collecting data on space objects, as well as new generation computing equipment. The system is fully automated and works by capturing reflected sunlight from objects.
Commentary: Meanwhile, a record number of asteroids were seen flying past Earth in 2020. This can be clearly seen on the graph, although it breaks off in 2020 due to a pandemic that interrupted the study and it is not known at what level the number of asteroids approaching Earth is now.
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