“Who knows what the Russians are doing now!”
Astronauts on the ISS hid as the dormant Russian satellite disintegrated into nearly 200 pieces. Six American astronauts aboard the International Space Station rushed to their spacecraft in case of an emergency flight.
According to the American space agencies, a failed Russian satellite disintegrated in orbit by more than 100 pieces of debris, forcing International Space Station astronauts to take shelter for about an hour and adding to the mass of space debris already in orbit.
As Reuters notes, there have been no specific details yet about what caused the breakdown of the Russian Earth observation satellite Resurs-P1, which Russia declared “dead.” in 2022.
The US Space Command, which is monitoring the debris accumulation, said there is no immediate threat to other satellites.
The event occurred around 16:00 GMT on Wednesday, Space Command said. It happened in orbit near the space station, prompting the American astronauts on board to take refuge in their spacecraft for about an hour, NASA's space station office said.
Russian space agency Roscosmos, which operated satellite, did not respond to a request for comment and did not publicly acknowledge the event on its social media.
U.S. Space Command, which operates a global network of space-tracking radars, said the satellite immediately detected “more than 100 pieces of debris that could be tracked”.
By Thursday afternoon, radars from US space tracking company LeoLabs had detected at least 180 pieces of debris, the company said in a statement.
Large formations of space debris in orbit are rare, Reuters notes, but are a growing concern as space becomes crowded with satellite networks vital to everyday life on Earth, from broadband internet and communications to basic navigation services, as well as satellites that are no longer in use.
The satellite breakup occurred at an altitude of about 220 miles (355 kilometers) in low Earth orbit, a popular region where thousands of small and large satellites operate.
“Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we estimate it will be weeks or months before the danger passes,” LeoLabs said in a statement to Reuters.
The estimated 25,000 pieces of debris larger than 4 inches (10 cm) in space, resulting from explosions or satellite collisions, have raised concerns about the prospect of the Kessler effect, a phenomenon in which satellite collisions with debris could create a cascading field of more dangerous debris and exponentially increase the risk of a crash.
Russia drew sharp criticism from the United States and other Western countries in 2021 when it hit one of its defunct satellites in orbit with a land-based anti-satellite (Asat) missile launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, Reuters reports. The explosion, carried out while testing a weapons system ahead of the conflict in Ukraine in 2022, led to the creation of thousands of fragments of orbital debris, says Reuters.
According to Jonathan McDowell, a space scientist at Harvard, during the approximately 88-minute period after the initial disintegration of Resurs-P1, The Plesetsk Cosmodrome was one of many places on Earth it flew over, but there were no immediate warning signals in the air or at sea that Russia had launched a missile to hit the satellite.
“Me it's hard to believe they would use such a large satellite as an Asat target,” McDowell said. “But who knows what the Russians are doing now.”
He and other analysts suggested that the failure could most likely have been caused by a problem with the satellite, such as residual fuel on board, which led to the explosion.< /p>
Dead satellites either remain in orbit until they enter Earth's atmosphere and die in flames years later, or, in the most preferred but less common circumstances, they are sent to a «graveyard orbit» about 22,400 miles (36,000 km) from Earth to reduce the risk of collision with active satellites.
According to Reuters, Roscosmos launched «Resurs-P1» out of service due to an on-board equipment fault in 2021, announcing the decision the following year. Since then, the satellite has apparently been lowering its altitude as it passes through layers of other active satellites for a possible re-entry.
The six US astronauts currently on the space station were alerted by NASA's mission control center in Houston around 9 pm ET on Wednesday (0100 GMT Thursday) to implement «safe haven» procedures where each member crew rushes to the spacecraft they arrived on in case an emergency flight is required.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams boarded their Starliner spacecraft, a Boeing-made capsule that was docked at the station June 6 on its first crewed test flight.
Three other American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut traveled on SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, which carried them to the station in March, while a sixth American astronaut joined the two remaining astronauts in the Russian Soyuz capsule that carried them there last September.
The astronauts emerged from their spacecraft about an hour later and resumed their normal work at the station, NASA said.
The prospect of satellite collisions and space warfare has added urgency to calls by space advocates and legal scholars for countries to create an international space traffic control mechanism, which currently does not exist.
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