NASA astronauts on the ISS hid from the debris of a Russian satellite — it crashed

American astronauts on the International Space Station were ordered to take cover for about an hour after a Russian satellite collapsed nearby. NASA reports that on Thursday evening, American crews took refuge in their spacecraft due to the satellite’s disintegration. NASA’s instruction to take cover was a precautionary measure. An hour later, the crews were allowed to resume their normal activities.

The US Space Command said that the collapsed satellite was Resurs-P1, which belonged to Russia and was decommissioned in 2021. The satellite’s collapse on Wednesday at around 16:00 UTC created «more than 100 pieces of trackable debris». LeoLabs estimates that Resurs-P1 weighed about 6 tons and was in a nearly circular orbit when it split.

«USSPACECOM has not identified any immediate threats and continues to conduct regular assessments to maintain the security and stability of the space domain», — the command said in a statement.

LeoLabs, a company that tracks space movements, wrote that it is tracking more than 180 fragments that drift in orbit after the break.

«We expect this number to increase in the coming days. We are actively analyzing the debris cloud to characterize it, identify potential causes and assess the impact».

The Russian satellite was a surveillance tool that captured high-resolution images that allowed distinguishing objects on Earth at a distance of about 1 meter from each other.

In January 2022, the space agency «Roskosmos» announced that the satellite had been inactive since the end of 2021 due to the failure of its onboard equipment after it had been operating 3.5 years longer than expected. The disintegration of satellites in low Earth orbit can often pose a danger to other satellites, spacecraft, or space stations due to debris.

Debris can sometimes remain in close orbit for decades before the Earth’s gravity pulls it into the atmosphere and burns it up. Space agencies are working to reduce the amount of space debris in low Earth orbit as more and more satellites are decommissioned and their debris increases the risk of spacecraft accidents.

The preferred way to dispose of a decommissioned satellite is usually to send it farther away from Earth, which reduces the risks to space activities near the planet. Another way is to let the satellite burn up in the atmosphere.

Source: Business Insider