Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have been forced to take shelter after a missing Russian satellite broke up in orbit.
US space agencies said the Russian spacecraft ‘Resurs-P1’ fragmented into at least 100 pieces of debris at around 10:00 MT (16:00 BST) on Wednesday.
The nine astronauts aboard the ISS, including the two “stranded” Boeing passengers, had to take cover for an hour for fear of being hit.
Resurs-P1 has been out of service for almost three years, but may have suddenly exploded due to a fuel leak on board or the impact of another piece of “space junk.”
It is unclear whether the debris from Resurs-P1 ended up impacting the ISS or whether the astronauts could have been injured if they had been spacewalking.
A decommissioned Russian satellite has broken into more than 100 pieces of debris in orbit, forcing astronauts on the International Space Station (pictured) to take shelter for about an hour and adding to the mass of space junk already in orbit, US space agencies said.
The US Space Command, which has a global network of space tracking radars, said the satellite immediately created “more than 100 pieces of trackable debris.”
U.S. Space Command, which has a global network of space-tracking radars, said the satellite immediately created “more than 100 pieces of trackable debris.”
“USSPACECOM has observed no immediate threats and continues to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the security and sustainability of the space domain,” it said in a statement. published in X.
“As such, USSPACECOM has notified commercial, government, allied and partner organizations through Space-Track.org to list Russia as the owner of the satellite.”
NASA has ordered crews aboard the space station to take shelter in their respective spacecraft “as a standard precaution.”
These ISS-docked spacecraft (Soyuz, Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner) are believed to offer better protection against debris than the ISS itself.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos, which operated the satellite, did not respond to a request for comment or acknowledge the event on its social media channels.
The satellite disintegrated at an altitude of about 355 kilometers (220 miles) in low Earth orbit, a region where thousands of small and large satellites operate, including SpaceX’s vast Starlink network and China’s Tiangong space station.
Resurs-P1 was a Russian satellite launched into space in June 2013 by the Russian space agency Roscosmos. Pictured is a scaled-down model of Resurs-P1.
NASA’s X account for the International Space Station said the instruction for crews to take shelter was a “precautionary measure.”
By Thursday afternoon, radars from the American space tracking company LeoLabs had detected at least 180 pieces of debris from Resurs-P1.
“Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we estimate it will be weeks to months before the danger passes,” LeoLabs told Reuters.
There were no immediate details on the cause of the disintegration of the Russian Earth observation satellite RESURS-P1, which ceased operations in 2021.
But Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, speculated that there could have been an explosion on board.
“These events can range from low-energy releases of a few pieces of debris due to insulation shedding, to energetic events due to a small impact or the explosion of an onboard battery,” he said. published in X.
NASA ordered crews aboard the space station to take shelter in their respective spacecraft “as a standard precautionary measure.” These spacecraft docked to the ISS (Boeing’s Soyuz, Crew Dragon and Starliner (pictured)) are believed to offer better protection against debris.
Events like these add to the general problem of “space junk”: a swirling mass of fragments of spacecraft, machinery and other man-made objects orbiting the Earth.
Dead satellites remain in orbit until they descend into the Earth’s atmosphere, only to burn to death years later.
Less frequently, they fly to a “graveyard orbit” about 22,400 miles (36,000 kilometers) from Earth to reduce the risk of colliding with active satellites.
Resurs-P1 had been lowering its altitude through layers of other active satellites for eventual re-entry into the atmosphere, Reuters reported.
