The US has accused Russia of “dangerous and irresponsible behavior” after it conducted an anti-satellite weapons test that threatened the lives of the seven astronauts on board the International Space Station (ISS).
Russia fired a missile at one of its own satellites over the weekend, generating more than 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of pieces of smaller debris, which the US said “now threaten the interests of all nations”.
Astronauts aboard the ISS were forced to float into special “lifeboat” pods following the release of the debris. The pods can detach from the ISS and fly crews back to Earth.
“Needless to say, I’m outraged. This is unconscionable,” Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said. “It’s unbelievable that the Russian government would do this test and threaten not only international astronauts, but their own cosmonauts that are on board the station as well as the three people on China’s space station.”
Nelson said the astronauts now faced a four times greater risk than normal with the ISS passing near or through the debris cloud every 90 minutes.
His assessment was based on the risk from debris big enough to track. But hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces were going undetected – “any one of which can do enormous damage if it hits in the right place”.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, also condemned Russia’s action and said satellites throughout Earth’s orbit were also now in jeopardy.
The test clearly demonstrated that despite Russian claims that it opposed the weaponisation of outer space, it was “willing to imperil the exploration and use of outer space by all nations through its reckless and irresponsible behavior”, Blinken said in a statement.
The UK defence minister Ben Wallace said: “This destructive anti-satellite missile test by Russia shows a complete disregard for the security, safety and sustainability of space.”
Anti-satellite weapons tests are rare and are criticized by the space community, due to the risk they create for crews in low Earth orbit. Last year US space command accused Russia of having “made space a warfighting domain” after it fired a missile at a satellite as part of a weapons test.
The Russian military and ministry of defense did not immediately comment.
Earlier on Monday, amid reports that Russia had conducted an anti-weapons test, Nasa’s Russian counterpart, Roscomos, tweeted that the ISS crew had been forced to move into spacecraft owing to an “object” orbiting the Earth.
The @Space_Station crew is routinely performing operations according to the flight program.
The orbit of the object, which forced the crew today to move into spacecraft according to standard procedures, has moved away from the ISS orbit.
The station is in the green zone. pic.twitter.com/MVHVACSpmT
— РОСКОСМОС (@roscosmos) November 15, 2021
“Friends, everything is regular with us! We continue to work according to the program,” Anton Shkaplerov, the current commander of the outpost, tweeted.
The Nasa astronauts Raja Chari, Tom Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and the European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer floated into their SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft for safety, according to a report by Spaceflight Now.
At the same time, the Russian cosmonauts Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov and the Nasa astronaut Mark Vande Hei boarded a Soyuz spacecraft on the Russian segment, Spaceflight Now said.
Experts say anti-satellite weapons that shatter their targets pose a space hazard by creating a cloud of fragments that can collide with other objects, which can set off a chain reaction of projectiles through Earth orbit.
The US performed the first anti-satellite weapon test in 1959, when satellites themselves were new and rare. The US fired an “air-launched ballistic missile” from a B-47 bomber at the Explorer VI satellite, but missed.
Russia conducted three anti-satellite missile tests in 2020, according to Space.com. Following the launch of an anti-satellite missile by Russia last December, Gen James Dickinson, the US space command commander, criticized the country for “persistent testing” of “space-based and ground-based weapons intended to target and destroy satellites”.
“Russia publicly claims it is working to prevent the transformation of outer space into a battlefield, yet at the same time Moscow continues to weaponize space by developing and fielding on-orbit and ground-based capabilities that seek to exploit US reliance on space-based systems,” Dickinson said.
He added: “We stand ready and committed to deter aggression and defend our nation and our allies from hostile acts in space.”
The US military is increasingly dependent on satellites to determine what it does on the ground, guiding munitions with space-based lasers and satellites as well as using such assets to monitor for missile launches and track its forces.
The anti-satellite weapons tests have also raised questions about the long-term sustainability of operations in space that are essential to a huge range of commercial activities, including banking and GPS services.
