NASA orders Sunita Williams, astronauts to take shelter in Starliner spacecraft as Russian satellite breaks apart

Satellite (Representative Image: Canva)

A major space incident happened on Wednesday, June 26. A low orbiting Russian satellite RESURS-P1 (#39186) broke into pieces resulting in the Sunita William in Boeing spacecraft along with other ISS astronauts taking emergency shelter.

There is a lot of space debris caused by this incident around 100 pieces are to be reported by the US commands. Both Sunita William and Butch Wilmore are stuck in space their way back home got delayed thrice due to which they are stuck in space.

Three of the other US astronauts are also present in the space who went for the mission in space in Space X Crew Dragon capsule in March.
US Space Command has said in their statement regarding this incident “USSPACECOM has observed no immediate threats and is continuing to conduct routine conjunction assessments to support the safety and sustainability of the space domain.” At the time of writing, US space agencies didn't indicate any particular cause for the event.

According to the estimates done by the Space-tracking firm Leo Labs, the space incident might have happened between 9:05 a.m. and 8:51 p.m. ET. (6:35 pm and 6:21 am IST).

There are no available reports from now on why the satellite broke apart, there are a total of six US astronauts on the ISS currently who got alerted about the incident when it took place by NASA mission control in Houston at around 9 pm ET to commence the execution procedure where each crew member rushes into the spacecraft they arrived in, in case an emergency departure is required.