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The seven Expedition 71 crewmembers gather with the two Crew Flight Test members aboard the space station. In the front from left are Suni Williams, Oleg Kononenko, and Butch Wilmore. Second row from left are Alexander Grebenkin, Tracy C. Dyson, and Mike Barratt. In the back are Nikolai Chub, Jeanette Epps, and Matthew Dominick.
HOUSTON—The nine International Space Station (ISS) U.S. and Russian crewmembers were instructed by NASA’s Mission Control to take shelter in their respective Crew Dragon, Boeing CST-100 Starliner and Soyuz transport capsules late June 26, following the breakup of a decommissioned low-Earth-orbiting Russian satellite.
Breakup of the RESURS-P1 satellite into an estimated 100 pieces of trackable debris occurred at about 12 p.m. EDT June 26, according to U.S. Space Command.
The orbital lab’s six NASA astronauts, including the Starliner extended Crew Flight Test mission duo of Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams, and three cosmonauts were instructed shortly after 9 p.m. EDT to vacate the nearly 400-ft.-long station’s pressurized modules for their transport capsules in the event they needed to escape in response to an impact.
After an hour, during which flight controllers monitored the course of the debris, the station’s six men and three women were told they could resume normal ISS operations, according to an ISS social media post verified by a NASA public affairs officer.
“USSPACECOM has observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain,” Space Command at Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, said in an update issued early June 27. “As such, USSPACECOM has notified commercial, governmental, allied and partner organizations via Space-Track.org to include Russia as the satellite owner.”
The cause of the satellite breakup was still being assessed, a Peterson spokesperson said.
Launched June 25, 2013, RESURS-P1 was a high-inclination, commercial Earth observation satellite.
The ISS orbits the Earth at an inclination of 51.6 deg. and was at an altitude of 279 mi. (434 km) in the wake of the satellite breakup.
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