Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have been forced to take shelter inside the docked Starliner spacecraft after a defunct Russian satellite broke apart in orbit, sending potentially dangerous debris racing around Earth.
"Mission Control continued to monitor the path of the debris, and after about an hour, the crew was cleared to exit their spacecraft and the station resumed normal operations," NASA said on the social platform X. Space junk in orbit above Earth is a growing problem for astronauts and satellites. Space agencies around the world try to keep tabs on the more than 30,000 of the largest pieces of junk, but many more pieces of debris are too small to monitor.
Scientists have proposed multiple ways of tidying up Earth's orbit, such as gathering junk up in nets, collecting it with clawed robots or firing a half-mile-long tether from another spacecraft to grab pieces of debris.