What is it in Space-Age Russian? by Michael S. Vartanoff

With Russia’s extensive history of spaceflight and manned missions, the decision taken to launch the test would have included calculations over space debris and the risk it posed to international and Russian crew members in orbit at the time. The 2007 test conducted by China meant that the ISS had to dodge one of the debris pieces in November 2021 – more than 14 years after the satellite was destroyed.

It is already estimated that the debris caused by the break-up of Kosmos-1408 ‘ will increase the number of avoidance by more than 100% in the next few years’ according to the European Space Agency’s Space Debris Office. Due to the high speed of impact, known as hypervelocity, even a small piece of debris can have an impact energy akin to a hand grenade – a chilling prospect given the manned missions currently operating in LEO.ĭebris can be extremely long-lasting. In addition to the 1,500 trackable pieces of debris that were mentioned, there are hundreds of thousands of additional pieces that are too small to be tracked from Earth.

Space debris, whether an entire dead satellite, a piece of a destroyed satellite or a tiny piece of hardware, can pose real dangers. There are several reasons why space debris is so concerning, other than the fact that deliberate destruction is polluting a space that is becoming increasingly crowded at the best of times. Operations resumed over the course of the day, but as the ISS is travelling in lower earth orbit (LEO), the station either travelled through or approached the debris field around every 90 minutes. All crew on the ISS entered the two spacecraft docked to the station capable of carrying them back to Earth, the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the Soyuz capsule, and all hatches were closed according to procedure ‘Safe Haven’.

The travelling debris fields posed a danger to Tiangong, the Chinese space station, and the International Space Station (ISS), which currently hosts two Russian cosmonauts. The resulting breakup of the 2-ton satellite led to more than 1,500 of pieces of debris according to US Space Command. Its target was Kosmos-1408, a defunct intelligence satellite originally launched in 1982. On Monday, 15 November, a direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missile was launched from Plesetsk cosmodrome in the northwest of Russia.

What is it in Space-Age Russian? by Michael S. Vartanoff