Astronauts on the International Space Station were forced to seek shelter last night after a Russian satellite broke into over 100 pieces.
The nine astronauts living on the space station were told to seek shelter in their respective spaceships, so NASAafter the debris was discovered.
NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams boarded their Starliner spacecraft, the Boeing-built capsule that has been in orbit since June 6. its first manned test mission to the station.
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Three other US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut went to The Crew Dragon capsule that flew to the station in March.
The sixth U.S. astronaut joined the two remaining cosmonauts in their Russian Soyuz capsule, which took them there in September last year.
The astronauts left their spacecraft about an hour later and resumed their normal work on the station, NASA said.
Russian missile theory
There was initially no further information on the causes of the disintegration of the Russian earth observation satellite, which was declared dead in 2022.
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Experts considered it unlikely that Russia shot down the satellite with a ground-based anti-satellite missile.
“I can’t imagine they would use such a large satellite as an ASAT target,” said Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell. “But who knows what the Russians are like these days?”
Russia sparked sharp criticism in 2021 when it hit one of its decommissioned satellites in orbit with a missile fired from its Plesetsk missile base.
The explosion was a test of a weapons system ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, creating thousands of pieces of debris in orbit.
Mr McDowell and other analysts speculated that the breakage could have been caused by a problem with the satellite, such as fuel remaining on board that could have caused an explosion.
The US Space Command, which was tracking the debris swarm, said there was no immediate threat to other satellites.
