Late Wednesday (June 26), the nine astronauts on the space station were briefly transferred to a docked return craft after the satellite broke apart in low Earth orbit.
The International Space Station (ISS) Expedition 71 crew departed for three spacecraft, including the Boeing Starliner, just after 9 p.m. EDT (2 a.m. GMT). NASA Update X, formerly known as Twitter, is a time zone that ISS follows. Same as GMTThe European Space Agency said the astronauts were likely asleep when the accident occurred.
NASA officials added that the move was a “precautionary measure” and that the crew was “allowed to exit the spacecraft after about an hour and the station resumed normal operations.”
NASA did not say which satellite was involved in the incident, but satellite monitoring and collision detection company LeoLabs identified a “debris event” that evening. “Early indications are that the non-operational Russian spacecraft Resurs-P1 was involved in the incident,” the company said in a statement. [or] “SATNO 39186 released some debris,” the company said. I wrote to X.
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The US Space Command also reported the Resurs-P1 event. About X More than 100 pieces of trackable debris were produced, the military said, but added that “no immediate threat has been observed and regular approach assessments are continuing.” (A approach is when two objects in orbit come close to each other.)
Resurs-P1 was launched on June 25, 2013, and operated until December 2021, exceeding its expected lifespan. According to RussianSpaceWeb:Earth observation satellites were used for a wide range of purposes, from defense to emergency monitoring to agriculture. NASA says.
The amount of space debris in orbit is a growing concern in general. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) tracks over 45,300 space objects in total as of today. According to SpaceTrack.orgHowever, this does not include untraceable works. Union of Concerned Scientists It also states that there are 7,560 operational satellites orbiting the Earth, a figure that is at odds with the number of non-operational satellites that cannot be controlled.
NASA works with the U.S. military to monitor the area around the ISS. Normally, the space station would move (if it had time) if any trackable debris about 2 inches (5 centimeters) in size fell into the “pizza box”-shaped space that surrounds the ISS’s orbit. The box is about 2.5 by 30 by 30 miles (4 by 50 by 50 kilometers) in size and is centered around the ISS, according to NASA. Government officials.
NASA procedures also state that astronauts can take shelter inside the return craft if a statistically very small danger could necessitate evacuation from the ISS. For example, Russia intentionally destroyed a satellite in November 2021 as part of a surprise satellite-killing test that other countries (including the United States) condemned.
NASA’s latest report did not say how close the satellite debris got to the ISS. Leo Labs said the release it was monitoring took place between 9:05 a.m. EDT (1:05 p.m. GMT) and 8:51 p.m. EDT on Wednesday (12:51 a.m. GMT on Thursday, June 27).
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The incident illustrates the stress NASA officials have been putting on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, which is more than three weeks into a 10-day crewed test mission. Starliner is on a test mission with two astronauts on board and has permission to leave the ISS in case of an emergency. (The other two crewed spacecraft docked to the ISS are the SpaceX Dragon, carrying four astronauts, and the Russian Soyuz, carrying three.)
However, Starliner’s planned departure date has yet to be announced, pending checks and testing of its thruster system and helium supply, since issues with those two aspects of the spacecraft were discovered on June 6. NASA Starliner astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have completed that testing and are currently on a maintenance mission at the ISS, according to several NASA updates on the space station blog. NASA officials did not respond to Space.com’s request for an update on Starliner by early afternoon EDT on Wednesday.
NASA said Friday (June 21) that the Starliner’s departure will be no later than July 2, following a spacewalk scheduled for the same day. But it’s unclear whether that spacewalk will even take place, since a coolant leak halted the spacewalk on Monday (June 24). Astronauts on the ISS have since conducted a “spacewalk review,” reviewing procedures over the next few days and inspecting the affected spacesuits, NASA officials said.
Boeing and NASA officials have said that developmental missions like Starliner often fall off schedule due to unforeseen circumstances, and United Launch Alliance, the Lockheed Martin/Boeing joint venture that provides Starliner’s Atlas V rocket, provided a positive update to reporters yesterday (June 26) during an unrelated conference call regarding the upcoming launch of ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket.
“Everybody is safe,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno told reporters on a conference call, referring to the Starliner crew, two of whom are former U.S. Navy test pilots who were seasoned in the development program.
“The helium leak that has been reported in the news is stable, and we understand that there is no need to rush the return because the spacecraft has a very large stockpile of helium,” Bruno added. “We have a lot of supplies on the space station, so this is also not urgent.”
As NASA officials noted, Bruno noted that except for one thruster that will be shut down during undocking, the other 27 thrusters in the Reaction Control System are still operational. Five thrusters showed anomalies during docking, with one offline, but the issues with the other four thrusters have been “largely resolved,” Bruno said.
Bruno added that discussions about what to do next are still ongoing. “NASA and Boeing are [the astronauts] I will go home when my work is done and I’m ready and everything is safe.”