Home › Breakup events › DMSP 5D-2 F13 (2015 breakup)
EXPLOSION · 2015-02-03
A U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program craft, DMSP-F13, exploded on 3 Feb 2015 when its aging battery ruptured at ~800 km. The well-documented battery failure became a case study in passivating retired spacecraft to prevent on-orbit explosions.
Last updated: · Catalog refreshed daily.
Isolate this debris field on the live globe →Opens Space Junk View, hides everything else, and frames the surviving tracked fragments of DMSP 5D-2 F13 (2015 breakup) as they orbit.
Breakup events like this are why low Earth orbit is now crowded with debris. Space Junk View tracks all 31,328 cataloged objects — including roughly 10,229 pieces of debris — and lets you isolate a single event's fragment cloud to see exactly where its wreckage went. See the full breakup-events hub and our space-debris statistics.
See everything in orbit — satellites, rocket bodies and debris →