By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A defunct Russian satellite has disintegrated into more than 100 pieces of debris in orbit, forcing astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter for about an hour and adding to the mass of space junk already in a orbit around the Earth is enlarged. agencies said.
There were no immediate details on what caused the breakup of the Russian Earth observation satellite RESURS-P1, which was declared dead in 2022.
The US Space Command, which monitored the debris swarm, said there was no immediate danger to other satellites.
The event took place around 10am Mountain Time (4pm GMT) on Wednesday, Space Command said. It happened in orbit near the space station, prompting U.S. astronauts on board to take shelter in their spacecraft for about an hour, NASA’s space station office said.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos, which operated the satellite, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Radars from US space tracking company LeoLabs detected the satellite releasing several fragments as of 6pm Mountain Time, the company said.
US Space Command, which has its own global network of space-tracking radars, said the satellite immediately created “more than 100 pieces of trackable debris.”
Major debris-generating events in orbit are rare, but are becoming increasingly concerning as space fills with satellite networks vital to daily life on Earth, from broadband internet and communications to basic navigation services, as well as satellites that are no longer in use.
Russia sparked strong criticism from the US and other Western countries in 2021 when it knocked one of its defunct satellites into orbit with a ground-based anti-satellite missile (ASAT) launched from its Plesetsk missile site. The blast, which tested a weapons system ahead of Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, created thousands of pieces of orbital debris.
In the approximately 88-minute period of RESURS-P1’s breakup, the Plesetsk site was one of several on Earth it passed over, but there was no immediate airspace evidence or maritime warnings that Russia had launched a missile to said satellite, space tracker and Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
“I find it hard to believe that they would use such a large satellite as an ASAT target,” McDowell said. “But with the Russians these days, who knows.”
He and other analysts speculated that the breakup could have been caused by a problem with the satellite, such as leftover fuel on board causing an explosion.
WHAT HAPPENS TO OLD SATELLITES
Dead satellites either remain in orbit until they descend into Earth’s atmosphere and meet a fiery demise years later, or in generally preferred – but less common – circumstances they fly to a ‘graveyard orbit’, such 36,000 km from Earth, to reduce the risk of landing in an active satellite. satellites.
Roscosmos retired RESURS-P1 in 2021 due to onboard equipment failures, announcing the decision the following year. Since then, the satellite appears to be lowering its altitude through layers of other active satellites for an eventual re-entry.
The six U.S. astronauts currently on the space station were alerted by NASA mission control in Houston around 9 p.m. ET (Thursday 1 a.m. GMT) on Wednesday to conduct “safe harbor” procedures, in which each crew member rushes into the spacecraft in which they have arrived. in case emergency departure is necessary.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams boarded their Starliner spacecraft, the Boeing-built capsule that has been docked with the space station since June 6 for its first crewed test mission.
Three of the other American astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut boarded SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule that took them to the space station in March, while the sixth American astronaut joined the two remaining cosmonauts in their Russian Soyuz capsule that carried them there September last year.
About an hour later, the astronauts left their spacecraft and resumed their normal work on the space station, NASA said.
The prospect of satellite collisions and warfare in space has increased the urgency of calls from space advocates and advocates for countries to establish an international mechanism for managing space traffic, which currently does not exist.
(Edited by Andrew Heavens and Frances Kerry)