COSMOS 2251 DEB

NORAD 37996· Debris· LEO

GLONASS satellite (representative) — Representative GLONASS image · Patrick G. · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Live · TLE epoch 2026-05-18 09:38 UTC

Orbit class

LEO — Low Earth Orbit (circular, < 2,000 km)

Operator

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Country

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Manufacturer

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Launched

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Mass

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Apogee

1,013 km

Perigee

694 km

Inclination

74.06°

Period

1.70 h

Debris origin · satellite collision

Kosmos-2251 was a defunct Russian Strela-2M military communications satellite, inactive since the mid-1990s. On 10 February 2009 it collided with the active US Iridium 33 satellite at about 789 km over northern Siberia — the first accidental hypervelocity collision between two intact satellites. The Kosmos-2251 cloud is the larger of the two, with roughly 1,600 catalogued fragments.

Parent object

Kosmos-2251

Event date

Feb 10, 2009

Altitude

~789 km

2009 satellite collision (Wikipedia) →

Part of the GLONASS constellation · this satellite is one of 636

Russian satellite navigation system. ~24 active sats in MEO at ~19,100 km.

See all GLONASS satellites →

Related satellites

Sources & further reading

CelesTrak — TLE source

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