On Friday, October 30, 2020 at 4:24:42 AM UTC-4, JF Mezei wrote:
On 2020-10-29 15:52, Snidely wrote:
Two defunct orbital masses seem to have not collided.
If 2 satellites, devoid of any fuel, one in retrograde and the other in
normal orbit, both on same plane and roughly same mass, ended up
colliding face to face, what would happen?

So we end up with a flat pankake that has 0 speed and drops straight down?

Behave as two tennis balls that bounce off each other, with the
retrograde now in normal orbit and the normal orbit SV now in retrograde?

Nuclear fission explosion that creates a black hole and sucks all of the
universe?


When a car hits a cement wall at speed, it doesn't tend to explode into
a billion bits flying out. Right? Just curious on what the actual
behavious of a satellte would be. Is the energy level such that his is
no longer a mechanical collision, and it behaves very differently?

In the case of more likely collision (a 50° satellite hitting a nearly
equatorial orbit for instance) would the satellite really spread debris
all over the place or would they remain more or less whole (with big
deformation where collision happened) and just see their
trajectory/orbit changed?

The Indian ASAT test ought to be a clear answer to your speculation.