Space: the US denounces Russia for an experiment that threatens the ISS
Do you remember the movie Gravity? We got close to it. The United States denounced Russia on Monday for conducting a "dangerous and irresponsible" missile test that detonated one of its own satellites, creating a cloud of dangerous space debris that forced the crew of the International Space Station to take action. evasive.
" Today the Russian Federation recklessly conducted a destructive satellite test of a direct ascent anti-satellite missile used against one of its own satellites ," US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a briefing.
" So far the test has generated over 1,500 pieces of traceable orbital debris and hundreds of thousands of smaller orbital debris pieces that now threaten the interests of all nationalities ."
The crew aboard the space station – currently four Americans, one German and two Russians – had to take refuge in the reentry capsules, the standard procedure in case of emergencies that put the station's interior at risk.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos downplayed the incident.
“ The orbit of the object, which today forced the crew to move in the spacecraft according to standard procedures, has moved away from the orbit of the ISS. The station is in the green zone , ”the agency tweeted.
But in his boldly prepared remarks, Price said the danger was far from over.
" This type of testing will significantly increase the risk for astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space Station, as well as for other human spaceflight activities ," he said.
" Russia's dangerous and irresponsible behavior undermines the long-term sustainability of space and clearly demonstrates that Russia's claims to oppose space arming are false and hypocritical . "
" The United States will work with our allies and partners to respond to Russia's irresponsible act , " he added, refusing to comment on specific measures, not least because it is not clear what the US can do on the matter.
Since the problems on Earth are not enough, the great powers are trying to take them into space with ever more daring actions. A shower of debris from space experiments, coupled with space junk made up of abandoned satellites and vectors, and the myriad of low-flying satellites, actually risks making space very dangerous, almost inaccessible, to human flight. Already in the 1970s, NASA scientist Donald Kesser predicted that an excess of debris would risk creating a "Space Congestion" of objects in LEO, the low Earth orbit, with serious and dangerous repercussions for travel with passengers in outer orbits .
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new articles of Economic Scenarios.
The article Space: the USA denounces Russia for an experiment that threatens the ISS comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/spazio-gli-usa-denunciano-la-russia-per-un-esperimento-che-minaccia-la-iss/ on Tue, 16 Nov 2021 09:00:22 +0000.