Within space on Wednesday, the earth observation satellite of Russia was decomposed into more than 100 fragments as debris in orbit. This incident took place near the International Space Station (ISS) that resulted to astronauts taking cover in their spacecraft for around an hour as a precautionary move. The United States Space Command mentioned that this does not immediately threaten other satellites.
The cause of disintegration is unknown presently and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency has not issued any comments regarding the incidence. LeoLabs, a US-based firm that tracks objects in space detected some pieces being released by the satellite up to 6 pm Mountain Time. On its part, US Space Command confirmed that there were “over 100 pieces of trackable debris” resulting from the event.
Although they are relatively rare, large scale generating debris events have turned into concerns because space is getting increasingly crowded with vital satellite networks. In 2021, Russia was heavily condemned by Western countries when it launched a ground-based anti-satellite (ASAT) missile to destroy one of its non-functional satellites leading to thousands of orbital debris pieces. Furthermore, no immediate signs indicated whether or not Russia had launched a missile against it during RESURS-P1 during its initial break-up window when it passed over Plesetsk rocket site.
At the end of their operational life-span, satellites are either left in orbit until they eventually decay within Earth’s atmosphere or put into a “graveyard orbit” located at 36 000 km from Earth so as to reduce chances of collisions with active satellites. Since onboard equipment failures made it unuseful Roscosmos decommissioned RESURS-P1 in 2021. It had been descending its orbital altitude slowly for eventual atmospheric reentry.
This is indicative of what will happen if there is no international space traffic management mechanism which can also address threats such as satellite collision and space warfare. The need for such a system which has yet to be developed has been expressed by space advocates and lawyers, in order to ensure that space is used by all safely and sustainability.
