By: Jingwei Zhao

Early morning on Wednesday, astronauts on the ISS (International Space Station) were forced to take cover when a dead Russian satellite broke apart into over 100 pieces in orbit.

NASA’s space station office reported the astronauts onboard were stuck in shelter for around an hour. Soon after the incident, astronauts could resume their work not long after.

There are currently no details about how the satellite broke apart. Russia declared the Earth observation satellite dead back in 2022. 180 pieces have been found as of Thursday afternoon, but The U.S. space command says the pieces of the destroyed satellites are not an immediate threat to the other satellites in orbit.

The region where the satellite broke was a popular satellite hotspot, with thousands of small to large satellites orbited and operated. Some include China’s Tiangong space station and SpaceX’s Starlink network.

Normally, this scenario of a satellite breaking down is very rare, but with the growing number of satellites floating around, people are starting to raise their concerns. These satellites are crucial when dealing with internet use and navigation services, as people rely on them every day, so having them break down and be a hazard in space is not something people want to have.

Dead satellites remain floating in space, which are known as “space junk.” Due to satellite incidents and collisions, there are about 25,000 pieces of debris larger than four inches in space. This already huge number of debris will increase over time, leading to many worries about the foreseeable future.

There are two possibilities of what happens after a satellite dies. Dead satellites often fall into Earth’s atmosphere years after powering off, where they are burned up due to the rapid descending speed. The second scenario is a that the satellite drifts really far from Earth into deep space, reducing the risk of crashing into other active satellites.

Dead satellites breaking apart are a hazard in space and raising concerns among people. Unless this problem is not dealt with soon, the problem of space debris will only grow.