by By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An idle Russian satellite has broken up 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 orbit, US space. agencies said.
There were no immediate details on what caused the breakup of the Russian RESURS-P1 Earth observation satellite, which Russia declared dead in 2022.
US Space Command, tracking the debris swarm, said there was no immediate threat to other satellites.
The event took place around 10 a.m. Mountain Time (1600 GMT) on Wednesday, Space Command said. It happened in orbit near the space station, prompting the US astronauts on board to 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 respond to a request for comment or publicly acknowledge the event on its social media channels.
US Space Command, which has a global network of space-tracking radars, said the satellite immediately created “over 100 pieces of tracked debris.”
By Thursday afternoon, at least 180 pieces had been detected by radar from US space tracking firm LeoLabs, the company said.
Large events that generate debris in orbit are rare but an increasing 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 which is no longer in use.
The satellite broke up at an altitude of about 355 km (220 miles) in low-Earth orbit, a popular region where thousands of small and large satellites operate, including SpaceX’s and China’s massive Starlink network containing three astronauts.
“Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we estimate it will be weeks to months before the hazard is gone,” LeoLabs said in a statement to Reuters.
The 25,000 pieces of debris larger than four inches (10 cm) in space from satellite explosions or collisions have raised concerns about the prospect of the Kessler effect – a phenomenon where satellite collisions with debris can create a more dangerous cascading field. junk and exponentially increase crash risks.
Russia drew strong criticism from the US and other Western countries in 2021 when it hit one of its unusual orbiting satellites with a ground-based anti-satellite (ASAT) missile launched from its Plesetsk rocket site. The explosion, which tested a weapons system ahead of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, created thousands of pieces of orbital debris.
In the roughly 88-minute window of RESURS-P1’s initial breakup, the Plesetsk site was one of many sites on Earth that it passed by, but there was no immediate indication from airspace or maritime alerts that Russia had launched a missile to go on strike. said satellite, space tracker and Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell.
“I find it hard to believe that they would use a satellite that big as an ASAT target,” McDowell said. “But, with the Russians these days, who knows.”
He and other analysts hypothesized that the breakup was most likely caused by a problem with the satellite, such as fuel left on board and resulting in an explosion.
WHAT HAPPENS TO OLD SATELLITES
Dead satellites remain in orbit until they enter the Earth’s atmosphere for a fiery meltdown years later, or in widely – but less commonly – best circumstances, they fly to a “graveyard orbit” of about 36,000 km (22,400 miles) from Earth to reduce the risk. crash into active satellites.
Roscosmos decommissioned RESURS-P1 due to onboard equipment failures in 2021, announcing the decision the following year. The satellite has since appeared to be descending its altitude through a series of other active satellites for eventual atmospheric re-entry.
NASA mission control in Houston notified the six US astronauts currently on the space station around 9 pm ET Wednesday (0100 GMT Thursday) to execute “safe haven” procedures, where all crew members go into the spacecraft in which they arrived, i. where an emergency exit is necessary.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams boarded their Starliner spacecraft, the Boeing-built capsule that has been docked since June 6 in its first crewed test mission to the station.
Three of the remaining US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut boarded SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule that flew them to the station in March, while a sixth US astronaut joined the remaining two cosmonauts in their Russian Soyuz capsule that transferred them there in September last year.
The astronauts emerged from their spacecraft about an hour later and resumed their normal work on the station, NASA said.
Satellite collisions and space warfare have added urgency to calls from space advocates and lawyers for countries to establish an international mechanism to manage space traffic, which currently does not exist.
(Editing by Andrew Heavens, Frances Kerry and Sandra Maler)
