Astronauts Forced to Take Shelter as Debris Cloud Threatens Space Station

The source of the debris field remains unconfirmed, but its sudden appearance coincides with reports that Russia has conducted an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons test. In a tweet, Gunter Krebs, a physicist and editor of Gunter’s Space Page, said the target was an “old Soviet Tselina-D SIGINT satellite called Kosmos-1408 (1982-092A) launched in 1982, which has been dead for decades,” and that ”14 debris objects have been tracked.” But Krebs cautions: “So far no confirmation from official sources.”

U.S. Space Force “is aware of a debris-generating event in outer space” and is “working to characterize the debris field and will continue to ensure all space-faring nations have the information necessary to maneuver satellites if impacted,” tweeted space reporter Joey Roulette from the New York Times.

Today’s incident comes less than a week after the ISS had to make an emergency maneuver to evade potentially threatening space junk. In that case, it was a remnant of the Fengyun-1C weather satellite, which China deliberately destroyed in 2007 as part of an anti-satellite missile test. India did something similar in 2019, joining the United States, Russia, and China as countries that have tested anti-satellite weapons. The 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty currently forbids the use of weapons of mass destruction in space.

This is a developing story and we will update this article as we learn more.