Beginning of hostilities in space? Fortunately no. Certainly what happened a few hours ago, Monday morning, is the symptom of a “spatial” and dangerous stupidity as well as a creeping return to the cold war between the superpowers.
The breaking latest news is simple: Russia seems to have launched a new type of S-550 anti-ballistic interceptor missile, very efficient, against its old decommissioned spy satellite, Kosmos-1408, very efficient, so much so that it has fully taken the spy satellite from eliminate and reduced it into many pieces, small and large, it is thought 1500, which, following the laws of mechanics, continued to orbit in formation. Basically a swarm of stray bullets.
Alarm for the International Space Station
Alarm for the International Space Station, ISS, and also for the Chinese one, but what we know about the ISS: 7 astronauts and cosmonauts – the latter, so called, are really Russians – if they took refuge in the auxiliary capsule, which carries astronauts up and down from Cape Canaveral to the ISS itself. The capsule is from SpaceX and is shockproof, at least much more than the ISS. Fortunately, all is well and the Russians have minimized: “The piece that forced the staff present in the ISS to enter the shuttle according to the safety procedures provided went far from the orbit of the station itself, which is now in the green zone as regards the safety”.
The American reaction
This from the Russian space agency Roscosmos. How to say don’t worry first and that the dangerous piece was ours you have to prove it, in secundis. Not cool honestly. The US reaction was not long in coming and blamed Russia for the irresponsible conduct: “It is surprising that a nation with a long and glorious history in the conquest of space puts not only the lives of Western astronauts at risk in this way, but even that of its cosmonauts, ”the words of the director of NASA, former astronaut Bill Nelson. Cold war tones that have been worrying and increasing, for a couple of years, since President Trump announces, with an official document, that multilateralism in space is over and that Europeans, Canadians and Japan could enter the new NASA programs , but not China, India and Russia. It was a blow to anyone who has seen the collaboration work for 30 years with the International Space Station.
If the responsibility of Russia is confirmed, then it can certainly be said, together with many foreign commentators, that we are in the presence of an act that borders on madness, the orbit of the ISS, remember that it is bigger than a football field, it is kept free of satellites and more by the international community as far as possible.