The two satellites that appeared to be on a collision course over Pittsburgh avoided crashing into each other, the U.S. Space Command confirmed in a tweet.
“@18SPCS confirmed the 2 inactive satellites (IRSA & GGSE-4) crossed paths without incident,” the command wrote.
Earlier on Wednesday, CBS station KDKA reported that the two satellites appeared to be on a collision course more than 550 miles above the Earth.
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LeoLabs, which tracks space debris, put out the alert along with a visualization of the event, predicting that the two satellites would pass within 50 to 100 feet of one another just after 6:30 p.m.
One satellite is roughly the size of a trash can and weighs about 10 pounds. The other is the size of a small car. They were seemingly headed straight for each other at more than 10 times the speed of a bullet.
“These are actual spaceships that could collide in space. … They’re unmanned and they’ve been not operational for a while,” said Ralph Crewe, who’s with the Bulh Planetarium and Observatory of the Carnegie Science Center, ahead of the miss.
According to LeoLabs, one of the two satellites is a decommissioned space telescope that was launched in 1983 and the other is an experimental U.S. payload that was launched in 1967.
