Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were forced to take shelter inside the docked Starliner spacecraft after an old Russian satellite crashed in orbit, sending potentially dangerous debris around Earth.
Nine ISS crew members – including Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams stuck in the Boeing Starliner – took shelter for about an hour last night (June 27) shortly after 9pm EDT (0100 GMT).
Astronauts took the precautionary measure after the disintegration of the Russian Earth observation satellite Resurs-P1, which broke into more than 100 pieces near the space station on Wednesday (June 26).
“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,” NASA said. On the social media platform X.
Obit monitoring firm LeoLabs first noticed the Resurs-P1 satellite, which had been declared dead since 2022, breaking up when it spotted a “debris-generating event in low Earth orbit” on June 26. According to a post on X. the US Space Command He said there were “no immediate threats” to other satellites. The exact cause of the satellite’s collapse is still unknown.
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Space junk in orbit above Earth is a growing problem for astronauts and satellites. Space agencies around the world are trying to keep an eye on more than 30,000 of the largest pieces of junk, but many other pieces of debris are too small to monitor.
Scientists have proposed several ways to regulate Earth’s orbit, such as collecting trash in nets, collecting it with clawed robots, or launching a half-mile (0.8-kilometer) tether from another spacecraft to catch pieces of debris.
This latest event also highlights the risks NASA and Boeing face in completing the beleaguered Starliner mission, which left astronauts Wilmore and Williams stranded aboard the International Space Station after multiple issues with the spacecraft.
The two astronauts were originally scheduled to return to Earth on June 13 after a week on the International Space Station, but their stay was extended indefinitely after engineers discovered five separate helium leaks in the spacecraft’s propulsion system and failures in five of the critical reaction control system. There are 28 systems. Defenses.
Due to the limited fuel used to maintain its orbit, Starliner can only stay docked for 45 days, so the window for a safe return trip continues to narrow.
NASA plans to keep the International Space Station operational until at least 2030. The massive space station will then be safely ejected from its orbit into Earth’s atmosphere, before crashing safely into the ocean. Earlier this week, NASA awarded SpaceX a contract worth up to $843 million to help build a vehicle to safely deorbit the aging space station.
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