A Russian engine spontaneously explodes in orbit, creating a cloud of debris

An old Russian engine that had floated aimlessly in space for more than a decade finally met its demise in a sudden explosion, producing at least 16 shards of orbital debris that now threaten satellites and other objects.

On Tuesday, the US Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron confirmed via Twitter that a SOZ ullage engine exploded in space on April 15. At least 16 pieces of debris were created by the event, which the Defense Squadron is currently tracking. The engine was used to launch three Russian GLONASS satellites in 2007, propelling them into the correct orbit once they were in space. The engine had been idling in space ever since, but with the lefton the high-energy rocket booster still packed inside.

“It’s kind of like a ticking time bomb, but with no real timer,” astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Gizmodo.

Something probably happened in the engine involving the rocket propellant, causing it to explode. Sadly, this isn’t the first time a discarded SOZ ullage engine has made a big mess in space. At least 54 of these engines have already exploded, and there are about 64 of them still in orbit, according to McDowell. This latest engine failure incident adds to the growing problem of space junk, or space junk, caught in Earth’s orbit.

“When I saw this, I wasn’t surprised at all,” he said. “These things have happened once or twice a year for many years, and that was really a problem. the engine is an older Soviet rocket design inherited from the Cold War, while newer spacecraft designs are designed to avoid these problems. “This particular problem of exploding remaining rocket stages was primarily engineered into modern rockets,” McDowell said. “The best practice these days is to passivate spacecraft when they are at the end of their mission.” Spacecraft passivation is the removal or deactivation of all potential sources of explosions.

But even if these older designs are no longer sent to space, the pre-existing population of these relic engines could continue to generate more debris and create new hazards for satellites, which in turn could lead to even more debris. – a serious problem. known as Kessler syndrome.

More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris are tracked by the Department of Defense’s Global Space Surveillance Network (SSN) sensors, along with many other smaller pieces of debris in the near-Earth environment, according to at NASA. This uncontrolled waste, whether it’s a retired satellite or a small piece of metal, travels at high speeds, running a potential risk of crashing into an operational spacecraft and causing damage. considerable.

In June 2021, for example, space debris crushed in the International Space Station, damaging one of its robotic arms. Later in November, astronauts aboard the ISS had to take shelter of a cloud of space debris generated by the destruction of the defunct Russian satellite Kosmos-1408, the result of a reckless Russian anti-satellite test. 2007 China anti-satellite trial created more than 3,000 pieces of large debris.

Space agencies hope to find solutions to ongoing orbital waste, with the European Space Agency having recently commissioned the first clearing missioncurrently slated for launch in 2025. The ClearSpace-1 spacecraft will feature four arms designed to clean up space junk in Earth orbit.

Large pieces of space junk “have the greatest chance of not just exploding, but colliding and creating a lot more debris,” McDowell said. “And so if you want to avoid some kind of chain reaction, so getting rid of the fat is what you want to do, and I think it’s going to happen.