Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have been forced to take cover after a defunct Russian satellite broke up in orbit.
US space agencies said Russia’s ‘Resurs-P1’ spacecraft 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 due to the risk of being hit.
Resurs-P1 has been defunct for nearly three years, but it may have suddenly blown up due to an on-board fuel leak or an impact from another bit of ‘space junk’.
It’s unclear if the Resurs-P1 debris did end up hitting the ISS or if astronauts could have been injured had they been conducting a spacewalk.
A defunct Russian satellite has broken up 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
US Space Command, which has a global network of space-tracking radars, said the satellite immediately created ‘over 100 pieces of trackable debris’
US Space Command, which has a global network of space-tracking radars, said the satellite immediately created ‘over 100 pieces of trackable debris’.
‘USSPACECOM has observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain,’ it said in a statement posted on X.
‘As such, USSPACECOM has notified commercial, governmental, Allied and partner organizations via Space-Track.org, to include Russia as the satellite owner.’
NASA instructed crews aboard the space station to shelter in their respective spacecraft ‘as a standard precautionary measure’.
These spacecraft that are docked to the ISS – Soyuz, Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner – are thought to offer better protection against debris than the ISS itself.
Russian space agency Roscosmos, which operated the satellite, did not respond to a request for comment or even acknowledge the event on its social media channels.
The satellite’s breakup was at an altitude of roughly 355 km (220 miles) in low-Earth orbit, a region where thousands of small to 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 Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. Pictured, a scaled-down model of Resurs-P1
NASA’s X account for the International Space Station said the instruction for crews to shelter was a ‘precautionary measure’
By Thursday afternoon, radars from US space-tracking firm LeoLabs had detected at least 180 pieces of debris from Resurs-P1.
‘Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we estimate it´ll be weeks to months before the hazard has passed,’ LeoLabs told Reuters.
There were no immediate details on what caused the break-up of the RESURS-P1 Russian Earth observation satellite, which ceased operations in 2021.
But Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, speculated that there could have been an on-board explosion.
‘Such events can range from low-energy releases of a few pieces of debris due to insulation flaking off, to energetic events due to a small impact or the explosion of an onboard battery,’ he posted on X.
NASA instructed crews aboard the space station to shelter in their respective spacecraft ‘as a standard precautionary measure’. These spacecraft that are docked to the ISS – Soyuz, Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner (pictured) – are thought to offer better protection against debris
Events like these are adding to the overall problem of ‘space junk’ – a swirling mass of spacecraft fragments, machinery and other man-made objects orbiting Earth.
Dead satellites either remain in orbit until they descend into Earth’s atmosphere for a fiery demise years later.
Less often, they fly to a ‘graveyard orbit’ some 22,400 miles (36,000 km) from Earth to lower the risk of crashing into active satellites.
Resurs-P1 had been lowering its altitude through layers of other active satellites for an eventual atmospheric reentry, Reuters reported.
