Panic on the International Space Station after satellite broke up forcing crew to shelter

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) were forced to take shelter after a defunct Russian satellite broke up into almost 200 pieces.

Nine people on board the space station were told to shelter for around an hour when the debris was spotted, Nasa said.

It’s not known what caused the Resurs-P1 Russian Earth observation satellite, which was declared dead in January 2022, to break up.

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, which operated the satellite, has not yet publicly acknowledged the event on its social media channels. 

The US Space Command (USspacecom) said it was tracking the debris swarm but there is no immediate threat to other satellites.

LeoLabs, the firm which monitors low Earth orbit using a global network of radars, said it was tracking at least 180 objects from the event, but this number could increase. 

However, the spokesperson said it was too early to determine what caused the break up.

‘Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we estimate it´ll be weeks to months before the hazard has passed,’ LeoLabs told Reuters. 

Nasa added: ‘Shortly after 9 pm EDT, Nasa instructed crews aboard the space station to shelter in their respective spacecraft as a standard precautionary measure after it was informed of a satellite break-up at an altitude near the station’s earlier Wednesday.

‘Mission Control continued to monitor the path of the debris, and after about an hour, the crew was cleared to exit their spacecraft and the station resumed normal operations.’

Mission control gave the all-clear around an hour later. 

Dr Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, said the cause could have been an on-board explosion. 

‘Such events can range from low-energy releases of a few pieces of debris due to insulation flaking off, to energetic events due to a small impact or the explosion of an onboard battery,’ he wrote on X. 

The astronauts were alerted by mission control at around 2am BST on Thursday to execute ‘safe haven procedures’ where crew members rush into the spacecraft they arrived in, just incase an emergency departure was required. 

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 test mission on the station.

Three of the other US astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut went into SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule that flew them to the station in March.

The astronauts emerged from their spacecraft roughly an hour later and resumed their normal work on the station, Nasa said.

Space junk is becoming an increasingly alarming issue as the Earth’s low orbit becomes littered with debris.

Usually, it doesn’t fall through the atmosphere as it should burn up on re-entry, however, that is not always the case, as this Florida man released when space junk pierced a hole through his roof and through two floors of his house.