A weather satellite exploded in space last month, but its operators, the U.S. Military, said it died of natural causes.
According to Space.com, the Air Force confirmed the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Flight 13 (DMSP-F13) expired in orbit on Feb. 3. Launched in 1995, the satellite was determined not to have been struck by anything, nor was its doom brought on by something outside itself.
The Air Force said DMSP-F13 experienced spikes in power before exploding and a system failure is the likely culprit.
"Basically, the spacecraft was 20 years old and experienced what appears to be a catastrophic event associated with a power system failure," Andy Roake, chief of the Current Operations Division at Air Force Space Command Public Affairs, told Space.com.
The Air Force downplayed the loss of the satellite, as its role was no longer vital to everyday operations.
"Because this satellite was no longer used by the National Weather Service or the Air Force Weather Agency, the impact of the loss of this satellite is minimal," the Air Force said in a statement to Space News. "We anticipate real-time weather data for tactical users will be slightly reduced without this satellite, but its data was not being used for weather forecast modeling."
Brian Weeden, a technical adviser for the nonprofit Secure World Foundation, said there could be cause for concern for other satellites currently in orbit. The DMSP-F13 explosion would have created debris.
"It wasn't nearly as serious an incident as the 2009 Iridium-Cosmos collision, but it was still a significant debris event in a very crowded altitude band, and could pose a concern for a lot of the operational imagery and weather satellites in polar orbits," the Air Force's former orbital analyst told Space.com. "Even though USSTRATCOM cataloged the new pieces, I still think operators would have wanted a heads-up that there was an incident. If the satellite operators' first knowledge of this event came from the amateur satellite observers or Twitter, then I don't think that bodes well for the U.S. military's recent emphasis on SSA [space situational awareness] data sharing."
