Space debris, whether an entire dead satellite, a piece of a destroyed satellite or a tiny piece of hardware, can pose real dangers. There are several reasons why space debris is so concerning, other than the fact that deliberate destruction is polluting a space that is becoming increasingly crowded at the best of times. Operations resumed over the course of the day, but as the ISS is travelling in lower earth orbit (LEO), the station either travelled through or approached the debris field around every 90 minutes. All crew on the ISS entered the two spacecraft docked to the station capable of carrying them back to Earth, the SpaceX Crew Dragon and the Soyuz capsule, and all hatches were closed according to procedure ‘Safe Haven’. The travelling debris fields posed a danger to Tiangong, the Chinese space station, and the International Space Station (ISS), which currently hosts two Russian cosmonauts. The resulting breakup of the 2-ton satellite led to more than 1,500 of pieces of debris according to US Space Command. Its target was Kosmos-1408, a defunct intelligence satellite originally launched in 1982. On Monday, 15 November, a direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missile was launched from Plesetsk cosmodrome in the northwest of Russia.
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