Earlier this month, China was forced to delay the November 5 return of three astronauts from its Tiangong space station after concerns that their ride home — a Shenzhou-20 spacecraft parked at the orbital outpost since April — had sustained damage from an impact.
And as it turns out, their suspicions were correct. In a statement to state-run news outlet Xinhua, the China Manned Space Agency revealed that crews had found “tiny cracks” in the “return capsule’s viewport window, which are most probably caused by external impact from space debris.”
As a result, the “Shenzhou-20 spacecraft does not meet the requirements for the astronauts’ safe return and will remain in orbit to continue relevant experiments.”
The incident highlights how much of a risk space junk, which can be errant parts of rockets or dead satellites and range from mere millimeters across to much larger, has become for prolonged human activity in our planet’s orbit. At speeds of tens of thousands of miles per hour, even the tiniest pieces can carry the energy as a bullet.
Fortunately, the three astronauts have now made it back down to Earth in one piece.
The Shenzhou-21 spacecraft, which launched to the Tiangong space station on October 31 with the next three astronauts on board, allowed the existing team to make their safe return in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region early Thursday morning.
The CMSA has since stated that the next mission, Shenzhou-22, “will be launched at an appropriate time in the future,” per Xinhua.
We’ve only begun to explore various ways to clean up our planet’s orbit. In the meantime, spacecraft, including the International Space Station, have to frequently fire their thrusters to ensure they don’t suffer the same fate as the Shenzhou-20 spacecraft.
As we send more and more satellites into orbit, experts are worried that the problem will get much worse before it gets better.
Worse yet, a burgeoning space arms race is greatly exacerbating the issue.
“It’s somewhat ironic that China’s spacecraft took a hit from space junk,” Georgia Institute of Technology assistant professor of international affairs Lincoln Hines wrote in a piece for The Conversation about the latest incident.
“The country is responsible for creating the majority of space debris,” he added. “In 2007, China blew up a defunct Fengyun-1c weather satellite to test an anti-satellite weapon,” he wrote. “It generated the most space debris in history — over 3,000 pieces are still orbiting today.”
More on the incident: Chinese Astronauts Stuck in Space After Suspected Damage to Return Craft
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