American astronauts on the International Space Station were ordered to take cover for about an hour after a Russian satellite crashed nearby. NASA reports that on Thursday evening, the American crew took shelter 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 normal activities.
U.S. Space Command said the collapsed satellite was the Russian-owned Resurs-P1, which was decommissioned in 2021. The satellite’s collapse on Wednesday around 16:00 UTC created “more than 100 pieces of trackable debris.” LeoLabs estimates Resurs-P1 weighed about 6 tons and was in a nearly circular orbit when it broke up.
“USSPACECOM has not identified any immediate threats and continues to conduct periodic assessments to maintain the security and resilience 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 were left adrift in orbit after the breakup.
“We expect this number to increase in the coming days. We are actively analyzing the debris cloud to characterize it, identify possible causes and assess the impact.”
The Russian satellite was a surveillance tool that captured high-resolution images that allowed it to distinguish objects on Earth at a distance of approximately 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 having 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 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 satellites are retired and their debris increases the risk of spacecraft accidents.
The preferred way to dispose of a decommissioned satellite is usually to send it further 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
