NASA has voiced “outrage” after a Russian space missile on Monday sparked a debris cloud and forced astronauts aboard the International Space Station to take evasive action, with France lashing out at “space vandals” who pollute space and put lives in danger.
“With its long and storied history in human spaceflight, it is unthinkable that Russia would endanger not only the American and international partner astronauts on the ISS, but also their own cosmonauts” as well as taikonauts aboard the Chinese space station, NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.
The State Department confirmed that the debris was from an old Russian satellite destroyed by the missile strike.
“It was dangerous. It was reckless. It was irresponsible,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price.
Commenting on the missile strike, French Defence Minister Florence Parly lashed out at “space vandals” who “generat[e] debris that pollutes and puts our astronauts and satellites in danger.”
Russia's defence ministry on Tuesday admitted to destroying one of its satellites during a missile test, but denied that the test was dangerous. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had earlier dismissed talk of a missile strike.
The four Americans, one German and two Russians on board the ISS were forced to briefly seek shelter in their docked capsules because of debris released by the explosion.
At least 1,500 pieces of the destroyed satellite were sizeable enough to show up on radar and with telescopes, said the State Department’s Price. But countless other fragments were too small to track, yet still posed a danger to the space station as well as orbiting satellites.
Even a fleck of paint can do major damage when orbiting at 17,500 mph (28,000 kph). Something big, upon impact, could be catastrophic.
“We are going to continue to make very clear that we won’t tolerate this kind of activity,” Price said.
He said the US has "repeatedly raised with Russian counterparts our concerns for a potential satellite test".
NASA Mission Control said the heightened threat from the debris might continue for another couple days and continue to interrupt the astronauts' science research and other work. Four of the seven crew members arrived at the orbiting outpost Thursday night.
NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who's midway through a yearlong mission, called it “a crazy but well-coordinated day" as he bid Mission Control good night.
“It was certainly a great way to bond as a crew, starting off with our very first work day in space," he said.
A similar weapons test by China in 2007 also resulted in countless debris. One of those pieces threatened to come dangerously close to the space station last week. While it later was dismissed as a risk, NASA had the station move anyway.
Anti-satellite missile tests by the US in 2008 and India in 2019 were conducted at much lower altitudes, well below the space station.
Until Monday, the Space Command already was tracking some 20,000 pieces of space junk, including old and broken satellites from around the world.
Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said it would take days if not weeks and months to catalogue the latest wreckage and confirm their orbits. The fragments will begin to spread out over time, due to atmospheric drag and other forces, he said in an email.
The space station is at especially high risk because the test occurred near its orbit, McDowell said. But all objects in low-Earth orbit — including China’s three-person space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope — would be at “somewhat enhanced risk” over the next few years, he noted.
John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the most immediate concern was the space debris. Beyond that, the United States is monitoring “the kinds of capabilities that Russia seems to want to develop, which could pose a threat not just to our national security interest but to the security interests of other space-faring nations.”
Earlier in the day, the Russian Space Agency said via Twitter that the astronauts were ordered into their docked capsules, in case they had to make a quick getaway.
The agency said the crew was back doing routine operations, and the space station’s commander, Russian Anton Shkaplerov, tweeted: “Friends, everything is regular with us!”
But the cloud of debris posed a threat on each passing orbit — or every one and a half hours — and all robotic activity on the US side was put on hold. German astronaut Matthias Maurer also had to find a safer place to sleep than the European lab.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
