AUSTRALIA SPACE
Missile strike on Russian satellite threatens safety of the International Space Station
By MySecurity Media
38 | Australia in Space Magazine
R
ussia destroyed a 39-year-old satellite with a missile strike on Monday, November 15. The explosion left a trail of debris in orbit, threatened the International Space Station (ISS), and raised strong reactions from the US and EU. Monday’s anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test destroyed the KOSMOS 1408 low orbit satellite launched in 1982. Weighing just under two tonnes, the satellite tracked radio signals from Earth. However, KOSMOS 1408 has passed its use-by-date. Russia reportedly launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome approximately 800 kilometres north of Moscow, using the A-235 / PL-19 Nudol ASAT system. Government and private space agencies tracked the missile to the position of KOSMOS 1408, some 480 kilometres above Earth. Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, later confirmed the strike. Roscosmos chief, Dmitry Rogozin, also confirmed on social
media he debriefed NASA’s Bill Nelson the following day. The satellite’s destruction, the first since India shot down one of its satellites in 2019, leaves around 1,500 pieces of trackable debris in space and countless more untrackable pieces. The explosion forced the crew of the ISS to retreat to their docked escape capsules while passing through the debris field. Onboard the ISS are seven astronauts from the US, Russia, and Germany. It takes the ISS 90 minutes to complete one orbit of Earth. The astronauts stayed in the escape capsules long enough for the ISS to twice pass through the debris field. The debris field also potentially posed a risk to China’s taikonauts aboard the Tiangong space station. But Russia claimed the missile strike did not pose any threat to space activity. However, the US and EU disagreed. “This test will significantly increase the risk to astronauts and cosmonauts on the International Space
