Meteor 2-7, a Soviet weather satellite silent since 1984, did break up in orbit on 5 October. On 4 November the US catalogue added four new pieces of debris from the satellite, all four in its own orbit, and our Breakup page marked the breakup Confirmed that morning. When we reported it on 9 October, it was still a suspected one: a small jump in the satellite’s orbit and LeoLabs’ radar pointed to it, but no piece had been catalogued.

In this Article

See all 5 on the live map

The four pieces

The catalogue names all four “METEOR 2-7 DEB”. Each circles between about 820 and 890 km, in the same plane as the satellite, tilted 81° to the equator. The catalogue rates two of them as medium-sized radar targets and one as small, and gives no size for the fourth.

In a month they have spread far along the satellite’s path. The breakup threw them off at about a metre per second, enough for each to go round a few seconds quicker or slower than Meteor 2-7, and two are now thousands of kilometres ahead of it and two behind. Traced back, all four orbits meet the satellite on 5 October.

Illustration: titled Meteor 2-7 and its four new pieces, a month on. Meteor 2-7’s orbit seen from above as a ring around Earth, drawn to scale, with an arrow for the direction of travel; distances are measured along the orbit, and the pieces’ heights differ by 2 to 3 km, too little to show. Meteor 2-7, a gold ring, sits at the top. Ahead of it along the ring are two red dots labelled 7,500 km ahead (2.5 s less to go round) and 10,800 km ahead (3.3 s less to go round); behind it, two more labelled 8,300 km behind (2.3 s more to go round) and 12,100 km behind (3.4 s more to go round). A note says that at the breakup on 5 October all four were with Meteor 2-7, and that pieces that take less time to go round pull ahead while the others fall behind, by 17 to 25 km more on every orbit
Where Meteor 2-7's four catalogued pieces were along its orbit at 12:00 UTC on 6 November 2026, from their latest orbital elements. Illustration: Orbinauts

They are not the first pieces of Meteor 2-7. With these four, the catalogue names 26 pieces of debris after the satellite, the older ones shed in earlier events; 15 of the 26 are still in orbit. How this breakup first came to light, from LeoLabs’ radar and a jump in the satellite’s orbit, is in our first report.

Read nextMeteor 2-7, a Soviet weather satellite dead since 1984, may have broken up

When and why it broke up

What caused it is not known: something either struck Meteor 2-7 or broke off it. Jim Shell, an orbital debris analyst, puts the breakup at 09:45 UTC on 5 October, give or take 10 minutes, when the satellite was near the farthest it gets from the equator, where debris is densest at its height. That makes him wonder whether one of the many pieces of debris nobody tracks hit it, though he expects the question will likely never be settled.

LeoLabs estimated tens of fragments when it confirmed the event on 7 October. A month later the catalogue holds four, so more may yet be added, and the Breakup page will list each new piece as it is catalogued. Meteor 2-7 itself can be followed on the live map.