First came the unexplained space objects over New Zealand. Then came the debris over Costa Rica and Texas.
By Wednesday, California-based LeoLabs, which uses radars to track objects in space to prevent collisions, had identified a total of 243 new pieces of debris orbiting the Earth — all from an anti-satellite missile test that Russia had launched two days earlier, to widespread condemnation.
“They basically set off a bomb in the middle of the new space race,” said Daniel Ceperley, LeoLabs chief executive and co-founder, of the Russian test’s impact on the burgeoning commercial space sector, which is situated in the same low-earth orbit as the new debris.