ISS astronauts take cover as defunct Russian satellite shatters
Al Jazeera
RESURS-P1 satellite splits into nearly 200 pieces, adding to the dangerous mass of debris already in orbit.
A defunct Russian satellite broke up into nearly 200 pieces of debris forcing astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) to take shelter for about an hour.
NASA, the United States space agency, had been informed that the RESURS-P1 Russian Earth observation satellite had split on Wednesday, instructing the six American crew on the space station to “shelter in their respective spacecraft as a standard precautionary measure”, the ISS said in a post on X.
“Mission Control continued to monitor the path of the debris, and after about an hour, the crew was cleared to exit their spacecraft and the station resumed normal operations,” it said on Thursday.
US Space Command, which coordinates space-related operations for all branches of the armed forces, initially tracked “over 100 pieces of trackable debris” from the satellite, declared dead by Russia in 2022, reporting that the incident presented “no immediate threats”.
By Thursday afternoon, US space-tracking firm LeoLabs reported that its radars had detected at least 180 pieces. “Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we estimate it’ll be weeks to months before the hazard has passed,” it said.
