The Russian experimental military satellite Сosmos-2499 fell into pieces. Again

The 18th Space Defense Squadron, a special unit of the US Space Force that tracks all man-made objects in Earth orbit, announced that the Russian military satellite Сosmos-2499 fell into a pile of fragments. And this is already the second time.

The second destruction of the satellite took place on January 4, 2023, and now the 18th Space Defense Squadron is tracking at least 85 large fragments of the apparatus. The number of small fragments should be much larger. Cosmos-2499 is in an orbit with an altitude of 1,169 km, which means that the fragments of the dead satellite will litter the Earth’s space for a very long time. For the first time, the satellite broke into 18 large fragments back in October 2021.

It is believed that Cosmos-2499, which was launched in May 2014, is an experimental survey satellite or even a space interceptor that can crash into and destroy US satellites. There is information that Cosmos-2499 was equipped with electrostatic plasma engines based on the Hall effect. Engines of the same class are used by the Ukrainian Ukrainian civil satellite EOS SAT-1.

In any case, now another Russian wunderwaffe, which the media named “Kamikaze” – is just a pile of space debris that creates obstacles for others.