DMSP-F13 weather-satellite breakup (February 2015)

On 3 February 2015, the aging US Defense Meteorological Satellite Program spacecraft DMSP-F13 suddenly broke apart in orbit. Investigators attributed the fragmentation to a battery rupture — a sudden temperature spike followed by a loss of attitude control and then a breakup — adding more than 100 catalogued fragments to an already busy region of low Earth orbit.

An old-spacecraft failure mode DMSP-F13 had launched in 1995 and was long past its design life. Battery and propulsion-system failures on elderly satellites are a recognized source of unexpected breakups, and the event became a textbook case for the importance of passivation — venting fuel and safing batteries at end of life so retired spacecraft can't explode.

Why it matters Each such breakup adds long-lived debris that everything else in that orbit must then avoid. Events like DMSP-F13 are a reminder that the debris problem isn't only about collisions and weapons tests — quiet failures of old hardware contribute too.