NASA astronauts urged to seek shelter after Russian satellite failure

• American astronauts took refuge on the ISS after a nearby Russian satellite broke up, NASA said.
• The RESURS-P1 satellite was decommissioned in 2021 and recently created more than 100 pieces of debris.
• Space agencies have tried to reduce space junk like this from decommissioned assets.

American astronauts aboard the International Space Station were asked to take shelter for about an hour after a nearby Russian satellite broke up, authorities said.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said Thursday evening that U.S. crews took shelter in their spacecraft around 9 p.m. Eastern time due to the satellite breakup.

It's around 1 a.m. for the astronauts, who follow UTC time on the ISS.

NASA said its instructions were a “precautionary measure” and that crews were informed an hour later that they could resume normal activities.

Meanwhile, the US Space Command said the destroyed satellite was the Russian RESURS-P1 satellite decommissioned in 2021.

The satellite's collapse on Wednesday around 4 p.m. UTC created “more than 100 pieces of traceable debris,” Space Command added.

“USSPACECOM has not observed any immediate threats and continues to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the security and sustainability of the space domain,” its statement said.

LeoLabs, a company that tracks spatial movements, written on X that it was tracking more than 180 fragments drifting in orbit after the breakup.

“We expect this number to increase in the coming days. We are actively analyzing the debris cloud to characterize it, identify a potential cause, and estimate the impact,” the company wrote.

By LeoLabs' estimate, RESURS-P1 weighed about 13,200 pounds and maintained a “nearly circular orbit” when it split.

The Russian satellite was an observation tool capturing high-resolution images allowing the observer to distinguish objects on Earth about 1 meter away.

Russian space agency Roscosmos said in January 2022 that the satellite had been inactive since late 2021 due to a failure of its onboard equipment after operating 3.5 years longer than expected.

Satellite breakups in low Earth orbit can often pose hazards to other satellites, spacecraft or space stations due to the debris they release.

Debris can sometimes remain in close orbit for decades before Earth's gravity pulls it into the atmosphere and burns it up.

Space agencies are working to reduce space debris in low-Earth orbit as more satellites are decommissioned, largely because the resulting debris increases the risk of spacecraft crashes.

In October 2023, for example, Dish Network was fined $150,000 for leaving a disabled satellite in the wrong location.

The most common method of disposing of a decommissioned satellite is to send it farther away from Earth, thereby reducing the risk of disrupting space activities near the planet. Another option is to let the satellite fall back into the atmosphere, where it will burn up.