Breakup of an Atlas 5 upper stage observed
1. April 2019:
On March 26 we were informed by our Russian colleagues (Vladimir Agapov) that they discovered a breakup of the Atlas 5 upper stage 2009-047B (SSN 35816; apogee - 34708.9km, perigee – 6675.6km) on March 25, 2019, at 22:23 UTC. The following night we were successfully observing fragments from this event with 3 sensors at the Swiss Optical Ground Station and Geodynamics Observatory Zimmerwald. The attached animated gif shows a series of observations from the 0.8m ZimMAIN telescope.