Astronauts on the International Space Station have been forced to take shelter final night time after a Russian satellite broke into more than 100 pieces.
The 9 astronauts dwelling on the house station have been informed to shelter of their respective spacecraft, in accordance to NASA, after the particles was noticed.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams boarded their Starliner spacecraft, the Boeing-built capsule that has been docked since June 6 in its first crewed check mission on the station.
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Three of the opposite US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut went into SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule that flew them to the station in March.
The sixth US astronaut joined the 2 remaining cosmonauts of their Russian Soyuz capsule that ferried them there in September final 12 months.
The astronauts emerged from their spacecraft roughly an hour later and resumed their regular work on the station, NASA mentioned.
Russian missile idea
There have been no fast particulars on what precipitated the break-up of the Russian Earth commentary satellite, which was declared lifeless in 2022.
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Experts thought it was unlikely Russia shot it down with a ground-based anti-satellite missile.
“I find it hard to believe they would use such a big satellite as an ASAT target,” mentioned Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell. “But, with the Russians these days, who knows?”
Russia sparked robust criticism in 2021 when it struck one in all its defunct satellites in orbit with a missile launched from its Plesetsk rocket website.
The blast, testing a weapon system forward of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, created hundreds of pieces of orbital particles.
Mr McDowell and different analysts speculated the break-up may have been brought on by an issue with the satellite, such as leftover gas on board inflicting an explosion.
US Space Command, monitoring the particles swarm, mentioned there was no fast menace to different satellites.