Phew! 2 big hunks of space junk zoom safely past each other in near-miss

[Admin]

Two big pieces of orbital debris — a defunct Russian navigation satellite and a spent Chinese rocket body — apparently whizzed safely past each other high over the South Atlantic Ocean on Thursday evening (Oct. 15).

Phew! 2 big hunks of space junk zoom safely past each other in near-miss : Read more

 

[Naburimannu]

Skeptic here: Describing their collision speed at about twice the orbital velocity of LEO implies that one of the two satellites is travelling retrograde. Is that in fact true, or was the author prone to a little hyperbole? I understand that retrograde satellites are rare.
Also, being pedantic here, a "near-miss" is the opposite of what occurred here. This was a "near-hit".