Laure Dautriche, edited by Gauthier Delomez 8:25 p.m., November 16, 2021
Russia admitted Tuesday to have pulverized one of its old satellites in orbit since the 1980s. The United States, France condemned this operation which endangered the astronauts present on board the International Space Station.
Several hundred pieces of debris are now in orbit.
An explosion of size.
Russia admitted on Tuesday having sprayed with a missile one of its old satellites in orbit since the 1980s. A shot that could endanger the lives of astronauts present in the International Space Station (ISS).
The United States and France denounced this Moscow operation, which is also accused of having generated several hundred polluting debris in space.
For the moment, the European Space Agency has listed 1,500 pieces caused by the explosion.
ISS astronauts ready to leave the scene
On board the ISS, precautionary measures have been adopted.
The crew of seven astronauts, present at an altitude of 400 kilometers, had to apply the emergency procedure and take refuge for several hours in their rescue vessels - Russian on one side, American on the other - to get to prepare to leave the station in the event of a problem.
For now, experts are trying to find out more about these hundreds of debris.
"They are new, so we do not yet know exactly their trajectories and their exact orbits", explains Didier Schmitt of the European Space Agency, who specifies: "For safety reasons, it is not possible to move the station (the ISS) since we do not know exactly the orbits that can be impacted ".
The international community sees this Russian anti-satellite fire as a risk of militarization of the cosmos.
With the fear that in the more or less near future, a country could destroy in this way the satellites of other countries, and thus paralyze many communication activities or even localization.