Sunita Williams stuck in space: NASA orders astronauts to take ...

Indian American NASA astronaut Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are currently stuck in space and are struggling to return to Earth. While NASA is figuring out a way to get them back safely, it urgently asked everyone on this mission to take shelter in Boeing’s Starliner spaceship as a Russian satellite broke into pieces and the debris came close to International Space Station, reported Reuters. Notably, the Starliner ship, that took off from Earth on June 6, is still docked to ISS at the moment.

As per the report, a defunct Russian Earth Observation satellite, RESURS-P1, broke into 100 pieces. This forced the astronauts to take shelter in their spacecraft for an hour. The reason for such sudden damage of the satellite has not been revealed yet.

This event took place at around 10 am Mountain Time that is 9.30 pm IST. NASA’s space station office revealed that it occurred in an orbit near the space station, prompting US astronauts on board to take shelter in their spacecraft. Russian space agency Roscosmos, which operated the satellite is yet to confirm the news. The US Space Command stated that the satellite immediately created "over 100 pieces of trackable debris."

For the unversed, the Starliner spacecraft is facing technical issues that makes its return to Earth risky. NASA and Boeing did not provide any date of return yet. It was earlier scheduled for June 14 but got postponed to June 14 due to glitches.

With this mission, NASA wants Starliner to become a second US spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts to the ISS, alongside SpaceX's Crew Dragon, its primary ride since 2020.

NASA official has revealed that Starliner can stay docked to the ISS for up to 45 days under normal circumstances. However, if necessary, this duration can be extended up to 72 days using various backup systems onboard. This will allow engineers enough time to figure out and resolve the technical issues with the spacecraft.