A malfunctioning Russian satellite disintegrated into more than 100 pieces of debris in orbit, forcing astronauts on the International Space Station to take cover for about an hour and adding to the mass of space debris already in orbit, US space agencies said.
There were no immediate details about what caused the breakup of Russia’s Resurs-P1 Earth observation satellite, which Russia declared dead in 2022.
The US Space Command, monitoring the swarm of debris, said there was no immediate threat to other satellites.
The event occurred around 10:00 a.m. MST (1600 GMT) on Wednesday, Space Command said. It happened in orbit near the space station, prompting the American astronauts on board to shelter in their spacecraft for about an hour, NASA’s space station office said.
The Russian space agency Roskosmos, which operated the satellite, did not respond to a request for comment or publicly acknowledge the incident on its social media channels.
The US Space Command, which has a global network of space surveillance radars, said the satellite immediately produced “over 100 pieces of traceable debris”.
By Thursday afternoon, U.S. space tracking firm LeoLabs’ radars had picked up at least 180, the company said.
Large debris-generating events in orbit are rare, but a growing concern as space is crowded with satellite networks essential 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 disintegrated at an altitude of about 220 miles (355 km) in low Earth orbit, a popular region where thousands of small to large satellites operate.
“Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we estimate it will be weeks to months before the danger passes,” LeoLabs said in a statement to Reuters.
The roughly 25,000 pieces of debris larger than 10cm in space caused by explosions or collisions of satellites have raised concerns about the prospect of the Kessler effect, a phenomenon in which collisions of satellites with debris can create a cascading field of more dangerous debris and debris. they exponentially increase the risk of a crash.
Russia drew strong criticism from the US and other Western countries in 2021 when it hit one of its malfunctioning satellites in orbit with a ground-based anti-satellite (ASAT) missile launched from its Plesetsk missile site. The explosion, which tested a weapons system ahead of Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, created thousands of pieces of orbital debris.
During the roughly 88-minute period of Resurs-P1’s initial breakup, the Plesetsk site was one of several locations on Earth that it flew over, but there was no immediate indication from airspace or naval alerts that Russia had fired a missile that would have hit the satellite, said Jonathan McDowell, a space tracker and Harvard astronomer.
“It’s hard to believe they would use a satellite as large as the Asat target,” McDowell said. “But with the Russians these days, who knows.
He and other analysts speculated that the breakup may have been caused by a problem with the satellite, such as residual fuel on board causing an explosion.
What happens to old satellites
Dead satellites either remain in orbit until they plunge into Earth’s atmosphere to a fiery demise years later, or, in widely preferred—but less common—circumstances, they fly into a “graveyard orbit” about 22,400 miles (36,000 km) below Earth. the risk of hitting active satellites.
Roskosmos decommissioned Resurs-P1 due to onboard equipment failures in 2021 and announced the decision the following year. Since then, the satellite appears to be lowering its altitude through layers of other active satellites for eventual reentry into the atmosphere.
The six U.S. astronauts currently on the space station were alerted by NASA’s mission control in Houston around 9:00 p.m. ET (01:00 GMT Thursday) to perform “safe haven” procedures, where every crew member rushes to the spacecraft , in which they arrived, in case an emergency exit is necessary.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams board their Starliner spacecraft, a Boeing-built capsule that has been docked since June 6 on its first crewed test mission to the station.
Three other American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut boarded SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which carried them to the station in March, while a sixth American astronaut joined the two remaining cosmonauts in their Russian Soyuz cabin, which carried them there in September last year. .
The astronauts emerged from their spacecraft about an hour later and continued their normal work on the station, NASA said.
The prospect of satellite collisions and space wars has increased the urgency of calls by space advocates and lawyers for countries to establish an international space traffic control mechanism that currently does not exist.