Debris from China's destructive anti-satellite test in 2007 likely collided with a small Russian satellite in January, a U.S.-based orbital debris expert said in a blog posting March 8. According to T.S. Kelso, technical program manager for the Center for Space Standards & Innovation (CSSI), the collision involved Russia's Ball Lens In The Space (BLITS) retroreflector satellite and a chunk of China's Fengyun 1C weather satellite, whose deliberate destruction by a ground-based missile created tens of thousands of pieces of potentially hazardous space junk. On Feb. 4, Russian scientists working with the Institute for Precision Instrument Engineering in Moscow contacted CSSI to report a "significant change" in the orbit for the BLITS satellite, including changes to its spin velocity and attitude, according to Kelso's blog, posted on the website of orbit-modeling software provider AGI. CSSI is the research arm of that company.
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