An exciting time in low Earth orbit – too exciting!

No end of space news. On Thursday there was this:

A Russian satellite has broken up into more than 100 pieces of debris in orbit, forcing astronauts on the International Space Station to take shelter, US space agencies said.

There were no immediate details on what caused the break-up of the RESURS-P1 Russian Earth observation satellite, which was decommissioned in 2022.

US Space Command said there was no immediate threat as it tracks the debris swarm.

The event occurred around 5pm Irish time yesterday, Space Command said.

It occurred in an orbit near the space station, prompting US astronauts on board to shelter in their spacecraft for roughly an hour, NASA’s Space Station office said.

There’s a number of science fiction stories about the effects of uncontrolled impacts between satellites leading to swarms of debris. 

The reality underlying those stories is thought provoking. 

On one particular day in 2021, astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS must have felt a pin-prick of fear and uncertainty. On November 15th of that year, Russia fired an anti-satellite missile at one of its own defunct military satellites, Tselina-D. The target weighed about 1,750 kg, and when the missile struck its target, the satellite exploded into a cloud of hazardous debris.

NASA woke the crew on the International Space Station in the middle of the night and told them to take precautions and prepare for a possible impact. The Chinese space station Tiangong was also in danger, and multiple countries and space agencies condemned Russia’s foolhardy behaviour.

And:

There are already about 6,000 satellites in orbit and a staggering 131 million pieces of debris between 1 millimetre and 10 centimetres in size. The debris travels at about 36,000 km per hour, and at that speed, even a small chunk can damage a satellite or space station. In May 2021, a tiny piece of debris struck the Canadarm2 on the ISS and punched a small hole in it.

…

Russia’s ASAT test in 2021 created a measurable portion of the orbital debris, and the more debris there is, the greater the risk from additional ASATs. The authors of the research article point out how the Kessler syndrome could eventually play out.

The Kessler syndrome? 

The Kessler syndrome (also called the Kessler effect,^[1][2] collisional cascading, or ablation cascade), proposed by NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler in 1978, is a scenario in which the density of objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) due to space pollution is numerous enough that collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which each collision generates space debristhat increases the likelihood of further collisions.^[3] In 2009, Kessler wrote that modeling results had concluded that the debris environment was already unstable, “such that any attempt to achieve a growth-free small debris environment by eliminating sources of past debris will likely fail because fragments from future collisions will be generated faster than atmospheric drag will remove them”.^[4] One implication is that the distribution of debris in orbit could render space activities and the use of satellites in specific orbital ranges difficult for many generations.^[3]

That would be potentially catastrophic. The integration of satellites into a range of areas – climate observation, communications and so on, is now so great that any impact on that would constitute a grievous blow to contemporary civilisation, particularly the areas of the planet that are less developed and which rely heavily on these technologies.

This is also the stuff of science fiction, or at least used to be, the news that there’s a problem with the Boeing Starliner spacecraft which has left the two astronauts using it stuck on the ISS. 

Boeing’s public relations crisis is now out of this world: the company’s Starliner spacecraft – and the two astronauts onboard – is currently stuck in space.

After what started as an eight-day mission, US astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have now spent the better part of a month on their space capsule attached to the International Space Station as engineers work out the problems with Starliner.

It remains unclear when exactly the astronauts will be able to make their return to Earth. A Boeing spokesperson told the Guardian they have “adjusted the return of Starliner Crew Flight Test until after two planned spacewalks on Monday, June 24, and Tuesday, July 2” and that they “currently do not have a date for the return, and will evaluate opportunities after the spacewalks”.

It is not an emergency and there’s no risk involved:

Nasa and Boeing officials insist the astronauts are not stranded and that the technical difficulties do not threaten the mission. Nasa said the spacecraft requires seven hours of free-flight time to perform a normal end of mission and it “currently has enough helium left in its tanks to support 70 hours of free flight activity following undocking”.

But it is an embarrassment and perhaps indicative of something stressed on this site on a near continual basis. Spaceflight is difficult. It’s incredibly difficult. Human or automated, this is at the cutting edge of our technological civilisation.