Nine astronauts on board the International Space Station They boarded their respective spacecraft to take refuge from a potential impact with space debris after a decommissioned Russian satellite shattered in low Earth orbit, at approximately 350km altitudeThe event, which occurred in the early hours of Thursday 27 June, was reported by LeoLabs, American company that monitors over 20,000 objects in orbit via a global radar network, through posts on X (ex Twitter).
NASA: «Standard precautionary procedure»
“An inoperative Russian spacecraft, Resurs P1 (SATNO 39186), released a series of debris between 13:05 UTC on June 26 and 00:51 UTC on June 27,” the company wrote. NASA said it had ordered astronauts aboard the space station to retreat to their spacecraft “as a standard precaution.” «Mission Control continued to monitor the path of the debris and, after approximately an hour, the crew was authorized to exit from the spacecraft and the station has resumed normal operations,” the American space agency explained.
«Over 100 pieces of traceable debris»
The US Space Command, which has its own global network of space tracking radars, then explained that the satellite immediately created “over 100 pieces of traceable debris.” Events that generate large debris in orbit are rare, but the “space junk” is becoming more and more, with the increased use of satellites also for non-scientific purposes. At the moment, however, no further problems have been reported, even if the debris swarm will continue to be monitored.
