Brian Everstine, Irene Klotz Test adds more than 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris.
Brian Everstine, Irene Klotz
About 6 hr. before SpaceX was to launch a new crew to the International Space Station for NASA in early November, Russia conducted a 6-min. maneuvering burn of the station’s core stage, ordered after data showed a potential conjunction with a piece of debris from a 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test.
A week later, the International Space Station (ISS) approached a new field of orbital debris, this time caused by Russia itself. There was no time to maneuver away from the cloud of wreckage caused by the Nov. 15 Russian direct ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missile test, so the astronauts and cosmonauts sheltered in the Russian Soyuz and SpaceX Crew Dragon capsules docked at the station and hoped for the best.
“I’m outraged by this irresponsible and destabilizing action,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “With its long and storied history in human spaceflight, it is unthinkable that Russia would endanger not only the American and international partner astronauts on the ISS but also their own cosmonauts. Their actions are reckless and dangerous, threatening as well the Chinese space station and the taikonauts on board.”
A day later, Russia acknowledged it had intentionally destroyed one of its defunct satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) but denied the debris posed a threat to the ISS, which is currently staffed by two Russian cosmonauts, four Americans and one European astronaut. Moscow’s defense ministry said in a statement that it had “successfully conducted a test” targeting a Russian satellite that had been in orbit since 1982.
U.S. Space Command said the test created more than 1,500 pieces of trackable debris and hundreds of thousands more smaller pieces that will threaten crewed and uncrewed systems in orbit.
International condemnation of the ASAT test was swift to follow, along with renewed pressure for establishing norms for operating in space and improved debris-tracking capabilities.
“Russia has demonstrated a deliberate disregard for the security, safety, stability, and long-term sustainability of the space domain for all nations,” Spacecom chief Gen. James Dickinson said in a statement. “The debris created by Russia’s DA-ASAT will continue to pose a threat to activities in outer space for years to come, putting satellites and space missions at risk, as well as forcing more collision avoidance maneuvers.
The test also comes as the Pentagon is calling for more resilient national security satellites, with the Russian A-235 Nudol missile strike showing that large satellites are increasingly at risk.
The missile was launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome early on Nov. 15 and collided with Cosmos 1408, a defunct Tselina-D class Soviet signals-intelligence satellite.
Aboard the ISS, the slumbering crew got a wake-up call from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Sorry for the early call,” said Flight Director Rick Henfling from Mission Control. “We were recently informed of a satellite breakup and need to have you guys start reviewing the safe haven procedure . . . which will include closing [modules’] hatches.”
“Thanks for the heads-up,” replied ISS Flight Engineer Mark Vande Hei.
The crew closed hatches between the station’s modules, then sheltered for 2 hr. inside their capsules, finally emerging only to have to close and reopen hatches 90 min. later as their orbit returned near the debris field. By the end of the day, only the hatches to the central core of the station remained opened.
Russia’s ASAT test is similar to the 2007 Chinese one in which an S-19 missile destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite. India conducted a like test in 2019; the U.S. military in 2008 shot down a failed satellite with a modified Standard Missile-3 and in 1985 destroyed the Solwind P78-1 satellite in a test of the ASM-135 missile.
The Secure World Foundation says countries that have conducted these tests need to declare unilateral moratoriums on further testing, which is an “unsustainable, irresponsible and destabilizing activity in space in which no responsible spacefaring state should engage.”
The test shows international steps such as the creation of the United Nations’ planned Open-Ended Working Group on space threats are needed. The group will meet in 2022 and 2023, with hopes of fostering an agreement that debris-producing testing is an irresponsible behavior.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, in a meeting with European Union defense ministers, said the test shows NATO systems in space, which are not weaponized, are at risk from the “reckless” act.
Within the Pentagon and the U.S. national security apparatus, the test was met with public indignation, largely because Russia knows the impact of the debris it created. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said such tests are a threat to U.S. national security interests, and the department wants to see international norms for space.
“There is no one that understands space and [its] environment as well as Russia, so let’s not be confused about whether they didn’t understand the likely impact of their actions,” says Sue Gordon, the former principal deputy director of national intelligence and former deputy director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. “It’s not that they didn’t understand the orbital dynamics.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the U.S. was hypocritical for criticizing the test, noting that the U.S. has itself militarized space by forming Spacecom. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told a Russian news agency that the test of the “promising” system was successful and hit the satellite with precision.
The Pentagon has long worried about relying on large, slow satellites that can be vulnerable to debris from ASAT tests. Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Hyten said before the test that not developing a resilient U.S. space architecture has been a mistake. Adversary satellites are less capable but also smaller and thus harder targets.
“So, we’ve actually encouraged the adversary to figure out how to kill fat, juicy targets,” Hyten said. “We shouldn’t have done that, and we could have done something different.”
Space Development Agency (SDA) Director Derek Tournear said the Pentagon’s new approach, under the SDA’s planned two tranches of dozens of military communications and tracking satellites, is to use smaller systems to be more resilient. The SDA is planning constellations within 1,000-1,200 km (620-750 mi.) in orbit, because 600 km and below is increasingly congested and at risk because of debris.
“Clearly, anything that increases congestion anywhere in space is something that should be condemned,” Tournear says.
This increase of debris shows that creation of debris--mitigation and improved tracking systems are required as more satellites are launched. Kevin O’Connell, former director of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Space Commerce, says: “We’re going to need all the eyes and ears in space to monitor the space debris problem” as more private ground and in-space tracking systems are created.
Space Command regularly tracks more than 27,000 pieces of space junk, including some 23,000 objects larger than a softball.
A previous test for Russia’s Nudol anti-missile and anti-satellite defense system.
The seven-member Expedition 66 crew spent hours sheltered in escape vehicles after Russia’s ASAT test. From left, the crewmembers are Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos; Thomas Marshburn of NASA; Anton Shkaplerov of Roscosmos; Raja Chari, Mark Vande Hei and Kayla Barron, all from NASA; and Matthias Maurer from the European Space Agency. Credit: NASA
