ISS crew endangered by space junk from ‘reckless’ Russian weapons test

Published

4 years ago

November 16, 2021

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A “reckless and irresponsible” Russian weapons test has created more than 1,500 pieces of debris now endangering the seven crew aboard the International Space Station, US officials have said.

Crew members were forced to take emergency measures on Monday after debris floated dangerously close by – and took cover in their docked capsules amid fears of a collision with the “space junk”.

The State Department later confirmed that the debris was from an old Russian satellite destroyed by the missile.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said: “Needless to say, I’m outraged. This is unconscionable.”

He said it was “unbelievable” that the Russian government would do this test and threaten not only international astronauts, “but their own cosmonauts that are on board the station”, as well as the three people on China’s space station.

Mr Nelson said the crew members now face four times greater risk than usual – just based on the debris big enough to track.

Hundreds of thousands of smaller pieces will go undetected and could cause “enormous damage” if it hits the right place, he said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned Russia and said satellites were also now under threat.

In a statement, he said the test clearly demonstrates that Russia, “despite its claims of opposing the weaponisation of outer space, is willing to imperil the exploration and use of outer space by all nations through its reckless and irresponsible behaviour”.

The ISS crew, four Americans, one German and two Russians, learned of the last-minute threat early on Monday before retreating into their capsules.

They were told to close the hatches between the space station compartments, including the European Lab, every 90 minutes until bedtime as a safety precaution, interrupting their scientific research.

Only the hatches to the central core of the station remained open by the end of the day as the crew slept, according to Mr Nelson.

When orbiting at 17,500 mph (28,000 kph), even a fleck of paint could cause significant damage, so something big could be catastrophic upon impact.

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters that the US has repeatedly raised concerns with Russia about doing a satellite test.

“We are going to continue to make very clear that we won’t tolerate this kind of activity,” he said.

NASA Mission Control said the heightened threat could continue to interrupt science research and other work on the space station.

In 2007, a similar weapons test by China also resulted in countless debris, with one of those pieces threatening to come dangerously close to the space station last week.

NASA subsequently had the station move away despite it being dismissed as a risk.

The US Space Command had previously been tracking around 20,000 pieces of space junk before Monday’s incident, including old and broken satellites from around the world.

It will take days, if not weeks and months to catalogue the latest wreckage and confirm their orbits, according to Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

He explained the fragments will begin to spread out over time due to atmospheric drag and other forces, and the space station is at especially high risk because the test occurred near its orbit.

However, all objects in low-Earth orbit – including China’s space station and even the Hubble Space Telescope – will be at “somewhat enhanced risk” over the next few years, he noted.

World

Elon Musk: Why some are starting to question if the world’s richest man is still value for money

Published

58 mins ago

November 6, 2025

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Elon Musk: Why some are starting to question if the world's richest man is still value for money

Elon Musk is already the world’s richest man, but today he could take a giant step towards becoming the world’s first trillionaire.

Shareholders at Tesla are voting on a pay deal for their chief executive that is unlike anything corporate America has ever seen.

The package would grant Musk, who already has a net worth of more than $400bn, around 425 million shares in the company.

That would net him about $1trn (£760bn) and, perhaps more importantly to Musk, it would tighten his grip on the company by raising his stake from 15% to almost 30%.

The board, which has been making its case to retail investors with a series of videos and digital ads, has a simple message: Tesla is at a turning point.

Yes, it wants to sell millions of cars, but it also wants to be a pioneer in robotaxis, AI-driven humanoid robots, and autonomous driving software. At this moment, it needs its visionary leader motivated and fully on board.

Musk has served his warning shot. Late last month, he wrote on X: “Tesla is worth more than all other automotive companies combined. Which of those CEOs would you like to run Tesla? It won’t be me.”

Not everyone is buying it, however.

With so much of his personal wealth tied up in Tesla, would Musk really walk away?

Bad for the brand?

Others see his continued presence and rising influence as a risk. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, which owns 1.1% of the company (making it a top 10 shareholder), has already declared it will vote against the deal. It cited concerns about “the award’s size, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk”.

Several major US pension funds have followed suit. In an open letter published last month, they warned: “The board’s relentless pursuit of keeping its chief executive has damaged Tesla’s reputation.”

They also criticised the board for allowing Musk to pursue other ventures. They said he was overcommitted and distracted as a result. Signatories of that letter included the state treasurers of Nevada, New Mexico, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Colorado, and the comptrollers of Maryland and New York City.

All of them Democrats. Republicans have been more favourable. There is a political slant to this.

The signatories’ concerns with his “other ventures” no doubt include the time Musk spent dabbling in right-wing politics with the Republican inner circle. That made him a polarising figure and, to an extent, Tesla too.

Pay packet dwarfs rivals

Combine this with a mixed sales performance and a volatile share price, and some are wondering whether the carmaker has lost its way under his leadership.

Irrespective of performance, for some, the existence of billionaires – let alone trillionaires – can never be justified. Some may also ask why Musk is worth so much more than the leaders of Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, or Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalisation.

Nvidia‘s chief executive, Jensen Huang, received $49.9m (£37.9m) this fiscal year. So, how has Tesla come up with these numbers? Why is Musk’s pay so out of kilter with the benchmark? Does the company have a corporate governance problem?

The courts have suggested it might. Last year, a Delaware court took the view that Tesla’s board members, which include Musk’s brother Kimbal, were not fully independent when agreeing to a $56bn (£42.6bn) pay packet back in 2017.

The Delaware Supreme Court is now reviewing the case. It is a reminder that even if Musk meets his targets, a similar fate could befall the current package.

The Tesla board is holding firm, however. Robyn Denholm, the company’s chair, told The New York Times: “He doesn’t get any compensation if he doesn’t deliver,” adding that Musk “does things that further humankind”.

Tesla’s valuation is tied up in its promise to deliver revolutionary AI and robotics products that will change the world. Those ambitions, which include robots that can look after children, are lofty. Some would call them unrealistic, but the board is adamant that if they are to become a reality, only Musk can make it happen.

Under the deal, Musk would receive no salary or cash bonus. Instead, he would collect shares as Tesla’s value grows. To unlock the full package, he would have to increase the current market valuation six times to $8.5trn (£6.47trn). For context, that’s almost twice that of Nvidia.

There are other hurdles. The company would have to sell 20 million additional electric vehicles, achieve 10 million subscriptions to its self-driving software on average over three months, deploy one million robotaxis on average over the same period, sell one million AI-powered robots, and boost adjusted earnings 24-fold to $400bn (£304bn).

They are ambitious targets, but Musk has defied the sceptics before.

World

Driver hits several people on French holiday island of Ile d’Oleron

Published

16 hours ago

November 5, 2025

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Driver hits several people on French holiday island of Ile d'Oleron

A driver has knocked down several people on the French island of Ile d’Oleron.

Two people are in intensive care following the incident and a man has been arrested, French interior minister Laurent Nunez said.

Several others were injured after the motorist struck pedestrians and cyclists, he added.

Thibault Brechkoff, the mayor of Dolus-d’Oleron, told BFMTV the suspect shouted “Allahu Akbar” (Arabic for God is Greatest) when he was detained.

Arnaud Laraize, the public prosecutor in La Rochelle, told the Sud Ouest newspaper the 35-year-old suspect “resisted arrest” and was “subdued using a stun gun”.

He said the suspect was known for minor offences such as theft, adding he was not on a list of people considered a threat to national security.

Pedestrians and cyclists were hit on a road between Dolus d’Oleron and Saint-Pierre d’Oleron, he added.

Police were alerted, with the first calls made at around 9am, according to French media reports.

Mr Nunez said in a post on X that he was heading to the scene at the request of the French prime minister.

World

Aerial images show destruction of Typhoon Kalmaegi in Philippines – with at least 66 killed

Published

16 hours ago

November 5, 2025

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Aerial images show destruction of Typhoon Kalmaegi in Philippines - with at least 66 killed

At least 66 people have died after Typhoon Kalmaegi struck the Philippines, as footage emerges showing the scale of destruction.

A further 26 people have been reported missing, half of them in Cebu, where floods and mudslides killed at least 49 people, the Office of Civil Defence said.

Six crew members of a military helicopter were also killed when it crashed on the island of Mindanao, where it was carrying out a humanitarian disaster response mission, according to the military.

The powerful storm, locally named Tino, made landfall early on Tuesday and lashed the country with sustained winds of 87mph and gusts of up to 121mph.

‘State of calamity’ in Cebu

Several people were trapped on their roofs by floodwaters in the coastal town of Liloan in Cebu, said Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine Red Cross.

She said in the city of Mandaune, also in Cebu, floodwaters were “up to the level of heads of people”, adding that several cars were submerged in floods or floated in another community in Cebu.

Cebu, a province of more than 2.4 million people, was still recovering from a 6.9 magnitude earthquake on 30 September, which left at least 79 people dead.

A state of calamity has been declared in the province to allow authorities to disburse emergency funds more rapidly.

Fierce winds either ripped off roofs or damaged around 300 mostly rural shanties on the island community of Homonhon in Eastern Samar, but there were no reported deaths or injuries, mayor Annaliza Gonzales Kwan said.

“There was no flooding at all, but just strong wind,” she said. “We’re okay. We’ll make this through. We’ve been through a lot, and bigger than this.”

Hnndreds of thousands evacuated

Before Kalmaegi’s landfall, officials said more than 387,000 people had been evacuated to safer ground in eastern and central Philippine provinces.

The combination of Kalmaegi and a shear line brought heavy rains and strong winds across the Visayas and nearby areas, state weather agency PAGASA said.

A shear line is the boundary between two different air masses such as warm and cold air.

Vietnam gears up for storm

The Vietnamese government has said it was preparing for the worst-case scenario as it braced for the impact of Kalmaegi.

The typhoon is forecast to reach Vietnam’s coasts on Friday morning. Several areas have already suffered heavy flooding over the last week, leaving at least 40 people.

Kalmaegi hit the Philippines as it continues to recover from several disasters, including earthquakes and severe weather over recent months.

Around 20 typhoons and storms hit the Philippines each year, and the country is also often struck by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes.