By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A defunct Russian satellite disintegrated into more than 100 pieces of debris in orbit, forcing astronauts on the International Space Station to shelter in place for about an hour and adding to the mass of space junk already in orbit, U.S. space 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 is tracking the swarm of debris, said there was no immediate threat to other satellites.
The event happened around 10 a.m. Mountain Time (4:00 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday, the space command said. It happened in orbit near the space station, prompting the American astronauts on board to hide in their spacecraft for about an hour, NASA’s space station office said.
Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, which operates the satellite, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. space tracking firm LeoLabs’ radars detected the satellite shedding several fragments by 6 p.m. MST, the company said.
The US Space Command, which has its own global network of space tracking radars, said the satellite immediately produced “over 100 pieces of trackable debris”.
Large events that generate debris in orbit are rare, 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 no longer operate. they use.
Russia drew strong criticism from the US and other Western countries in 2021 when it struck one of its defunct satellites in orbit with a ground-based anti-satellite (ASAT) missile launched from its Plesetsk missile site. The explosion, testing a weapons system ahead of Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, 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 places on Earth it passed over, but there was no immediate indication from airspace or maritime signals that Russia had fired a missile to strike, the astronomer said. Jonathan McDowell of the satellite, the space tracker and Harvard.
“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 may have been caused by a problem with the satellite, such as fuel residue on board causing an explosion.
WHAT HAPPENS TO OLD SATELLITES
Dead satellites either remain in orbit until they descend into Earth’s atmosphere for a fiery death years later, or, in widely preferred – but less common – circumstances, fly to a “grave orbit” about 36,000 km from Earth to reduce the risk of disaster in active satellites.
Roscosmos decommissioned RESURS-P1 due to onboard equipment failure in 2021, announcing the decision the following year. Since then, the satellite appears to be lowering its altitude through layers of other active satellites for eventual re-entry into the atmosphere.
The six American astronauts currently on the space station were alerted by NASA’s mission control in Houston around 9:00 p.m. ET Wednesday (01:00 GMT Thursday) to perform “safe haven” procedures. in which each crew member rushes to the spacecraft they arrived on in case an emergency exit is necessary.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams boarded their Starliner spacecraft, the Boeing-built capsule that has been docked since June 6 on its first manned test mission to the station.
Three of the other American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut entered SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule that took them to the station in March, while the sixth American astronaut joined the other two astronauts in their Russian Soyuz capsule that took them there last September.
The astronauts exited their spacecraft approximately an hour later and resumed normal operations at the station, NASA said.
The prospect of satellite collisions and space warfare has added urgency to calls by space advocates and lawyers to get countries to create an international mechanism to manage space traffic, which currently does not exist.
(Editing by Andrew Havens and Frances Carey)
