ASTRONAUTS aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were forced to take shelter after a disused Russian satellite broke up in orbit.
Nearly 200 fragments of debris were scattered near the path of the ISS, meaning astronauts had to brace for a potential impact for about an hour.
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The incident occurred in an orbit close to the ISS at 4pm GMT on Wednesday, according to US Space Command.
It happened in a region of the atmosphere dominated by thousands of small to large satellites, called low Earth orbit (LEO).
It is unclear what caused the collapse of the Russian Earth observation satellite Resurs-P1, which Russia said it will retire in 2022, Reuters first reported.
Space Command, which tracks hazardous debris in space, said there is no immediate threat to other satellites.
However, Space Command said the satellite immediately created “more than 100 pieces of trackable debris.”
By Thursday afternoon, that number had increased to at least 180 pieces, according to US space tracking company LeoLabs.
“Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we estimate that it will take weeks or months for the danger to pass,” LeoLabs told Reuters.
Although large debris-generating events are rare, they are a growing concern for both space objects and infrastructure and people on Earth.
The Kessler effect, proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, suggests a nightmare scenario where the number of satellites and orbital debris is so high that an endless series of collisions occurs.
Each impact generates more space debris and, in turn, a cascade of collisions.
Several experts now believe this effect is a matter of when, not if.
Many closed calls
By Millie Turner, Senior Technology and Science Reporter
At the current rate, it is only a matter of time before we have our first casualty caused by man-made space objects.
No one has yet died from falling space debris, although there have been many cases of infrastructure damage and even injuries.
In 2002, six-year-old Wu Jie became the first person to be directly injured by falling space debris, after 20 pieces of metal from a rocket fell onto his village in China.
Fast forward to June 2024, and we have a Florida family suing NASA for $80,000 in damages after an object from the ISS hit their home.
The cylindrical object fell two stories into their home earlier this year and almost hit their son.
The unstable irregularity of pre-SpaceX space launches meant that NASA could afford to count on the chance that the spent metal would land in the ocean or an uninhabited area — if it hadn’t already burned up.
But that won’t work for much longer.
This story originally appeared on The-sun.com read the full story
