Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) were forced to take shelter after a defunct Russian satellite broke up into almost 200 pieces.
Nine people on board the space station were told to shelter for around an hour when the debris was spotted, Nasa said.
It’s not known what caused the Resurs-P1 Russian Earth observation satellite, which was declared dead in January 2022, to break up.
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, which operated the satellite, has not yet publicly acknowledged the event on its social media channels.
The US Space Command (USspacecom) said it was tracking the debris swarm but there is no immediate threat to other satellites.
LeoLabs, the firm which monitors low Earth orbit using a global network of radars, said it was tracking at least 180 objects from the event, but this number could increase.
However, the spokesperson said it was too early to determine what caused the break up.
‘Due to the low orbit of this debris cloud, we estimate it´ll …