The United States denounced Russia on Monday for conducting a "dangerous and irresponsible" missile strike that blew up one of its own satellites, creating a debris cloud that forced the International Space Station's crew to take evasive action.
Washington wasn't informed in advance about the test, only the fourth ever to hit a spacecraft from the ground, and will talk to allies about how to respond, said officials.
The move reignites concerns about the growing space arms race, encompassing everything from the development of satellites capable of shunting others out of orbit to laser weapons.
"On November 15, 2021, the Russian Federation recklessly conducted a destructive test of a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile against one of its own satellites," said Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in a statement.
He added the test had generated over 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and will likely create hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris.
The crew aboard the orbital outpost – currently four Americans, a German and two Russians – had to take shelter in their return ships, the standard "safe haven" alarm procedure in the event of an emergency that might force evacuation.
The station later returned to a "green" alert level, tweeted Russian space agency Roscosmos.
But in his strongly-worded remarks, Blinken said the danger was far from over. READ MORE...
A Russian film crew are back on Earth after wrapping up scenes for the first movie shot in space.
Klim Shipenko and actor Yulia Peresild left the International Space Station and landed in Kazakhstan - to be met by a crew filming touchdown scenes.
The ISS shooting was not without drama - suitable for a film called Challenge.
On Friday the ISS unexpectedly tilted after a glitch in its thrusters, pausing filming. It was not thought to be part of the script.
In a farewell tweet from the ISS, Peresild showed off a weightless hairdo likely to thwart any conspiracy theorists who think it was all shot on Earth:
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter
The movie has been in its own kind of space race - with Tom Cruise. He is apparently part of a Hollywood filming-in-space project involving Nasa and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The module carrying Peresild and Shipenko, along with cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, parachuted down to Earth at about lunchtime on Sunday in the Kazakhstan steppe.
Their departure was not delayed by Friday's glitch, which resulted in lost positioning control for about half an hour. READ MORE...
