Although the U.S. Air Force has not yet concluded its investigation into the Feb. 3 explosion aboard a 20-year-old military weather satellite, experts say the public details are consistent with a catastrophic battery failure. "It is not uncommon to have batteries overheat in space and eventually explode," said T.S. Kelso, a senior research astrodynamicist at the Center for Space Standards & Innovation, a research arm of orbit-modeling software provider AGI. Kelso, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel, spent most of his military career working on space programs, including stints as the operations chief for the nation's GPS satellites in the 1980s and director of Air Force Space Command's Space Analysis Center during the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia accident investigation.
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机译：尽管美国空军尚未在2月3日使用一架具有20年历史的军事气象卫星上完成对爆炸的调查，但专家表示，公开细节与灾难性的电池故障是一致的。 T.S.说：“在太空中电池过热并最终爆炸的情况并不罕见。”凯尔索（Kelso）是太空标准与创新中心（Center for Space Standards and Innovation）的资深研究天文学家，该中心是轨道建模软件提供商AGI的研究机构。凯尔索（Kelso）是美国空军上校的退休上校，他的大部分军事生涯都用于太空计划，包括在1980年代担任美国GPS卫星业务负责人，并在2003年哥伦比亚航天飞机担任空军太空司令部太空分析中心主任事故调查。
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