The RESURS-P1 satellite broke up into nearly 200 pieces, adding to the mass of dangerous debris already in orbit.
A defunct Russian satellite broke into about 200 pieces, forcing astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) to evacuate for about an hour.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was notified that the Russian Earth-observation satellite RESURS-P1 had separated on Wednesday and instructed the six American crew members aboard the space station to “evacuate to their spacecraft as a standard precaution,” the ISS said in a post on X.
“Mission Control continued to monitor the path of the debris, and after approximately an hour, the crew was cleared to exit the spacecraft and the station resumed normal operations,” the agency said in a statement on Thursday.
The U.S. Space Command, which coordinates space-related operations across all branches of the military, initially reported that it had tracked “more than 100 trackable debris” from the satellite, which Russia declared would be decommissioned in 2022, and that the incident “did not pose an imminent threat.”
By Thursday afternoon, US space tracking company LeoLabs reported that its radar had detected at least 180 pieces of debris. “Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we expect it may take weeks to months before it poses any danger,” the company said.
Russian space agency Roscosmos scrapped RESURS-P1 in 2021, citing malfunctions in its onboard equipment. The company did not respond to a request for comment and did not publicly acknowledge the incident on its social media channels.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have been aboard the Boeing Starliner space capsule since June 6th, docked with the ISS on the first manned test mission.
Three other American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut flew to the space station aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft in March. The sixth American astronaut joined two other Russian astronauts aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft last September.
Collision risk
Large debris events in orbit are rare, but they are a growing concern as space becomes increasingly crowded with satellite networks that are vital to daily life on Earth, providing everything from broadband internet and communications to basic navigation services.
Russia struck one of the defunct satellites in orbit with a ground-based anti-satellite (ASAT) missile launched from the Plesetsk rocket base in 2021. The explosion was a test of a weapons system ahead of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and created thousands of pieces of orbital debris.
Space tracker and Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell said there were no immediate air or maritime alerts indicating Russia had launched missiles to attack the RESURS-P1 satellite.
“It’s hard to believe that a satellite that large would be used as an ASAT target,” McDowell said. He and other analysts speculated that the debris was more likely caused by a problem with the satellite itself, such as residual fuel on board causing an explosion.
There are about 25,000 pieces of debris larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter in space, and experts are concerned about the possibility of the Kessler effect, in which a collision between a satellite and debris can set off a chain reaction of even more dangerous pieces, exponentially increasing the risk of a collision.