By 
February 2nd, 2026
Spot-3 Earth Observation satellite.
Image credit: CNES
Yet another “close call/near miss” in Earth orbit.
On Christmas Day 2025, a European non-operational payload (SPOT 3) passed within roughly 65 feet (20 meters) of a fragment from a Soviet payload that exploded in 1996.
“This conjunction involved two objects left in orbit last century,” said Darren McKnight, a senior technical fellow for LeoLabs that offers persistent orbital intelligence for space domain awareness.
Cosmic culprits
SPOT 3 (Satellite pour l’Observation de la Terre) was a commercial Earth-imaging satellite from CNES (Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales), the French Space Agency. It was launched on September 26, 1993 and ceased operations after a malfunction in November 1996.
The other object was a fragment of the former Soviet Union’s Cosmos 1275 that was launched and then broke apart in 1981, with the break-up occurring at approximately 609 miles (980 kilometers).
Image credit: LeoLabs
Two-body problem
The actual near two-body bang-up was at roughly 525 miles (845 kilometers) altitude.
According to a History of On-orbit Satellite Fragmentations, 16th Edition, produced by NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office, the Soviet Cosmos 1275 is the only member of its class, Parus, to explosively fragment.
Image credit: History of On-orbit Satellite Fragmentations, 16th Edition
The defunct spacecraft was a member of a Soviet military navigation system called the Parus series. The satellite was only 50 days old at the time of the event.
“During the February 1992 Space Debris Conference in Moscow, Russian analysts discussed independent studies about the probable cause of the breakup. Later, the official Russian assessment asserted that a battery malfunction was the likely culprit,” the NASA document explains.
PC factor
Often, probability of collision (PC) drops as time of closest approach (TCA) is approached, “however, it stayed very stable for this event,” McKnight adds.
“When an eventual collision occurs,” McKnight said, it will likely look like this PC/miss distance evolution (see LeoLabs chart).
Image credit: Darren McKnight/LeoLabs
Posted in Space News
