The astronauts had to urgently take refuge in their spaceship for possible return in the event of a collision.
Moving through space is not easy. Astronauts on the International Space Station know something about this. They were just woken up in the middle of the night to seek emergency shelter during the night from Wednesday to Thursday. NASA asked the astronauts “To take shelter in their spaceships as a precaution.”.
Just after 9pm EST. @NASA Crews aboard the space station were forced to take shelter in their spacecraft as a standard precaution after being told a satellite had disintegrated high above the station earlier Wednesday. Mission control continues…
– International Space Station (@Space_Station) June 27, 2024
They had to retreat to return capsules docked at the International Space Station to face the risk of collision with space debris, he notes Huffington Post.
LeoLabs detected a debris-generating event in low Earth orbit.
Early indications are that a non-operational Russian spacecraft, Resurs P1 (SATNO 39186), ejected a number of fragments between 13:05 UTC on June 26 and 00:51 UTC on June 27.
— Leo Labs (@LeoLabs_Space) June 27, 2024
Their path could actually cross the path of space debris, coming from an old Russian satellite that just disintegrated into several hundred pieces as space debris monitoring company LeoLabs Space on
The debris was orbiting in a low orbit at an altitude close to the station's altitude on Wednesday. If the space debris was indeed very large, the path of these new arrivals was then unknown and a source of potential danger. After about an hour of observation, the crew was allowed to leave their spacecraft and the station resumed normal operations.
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