Chris Hadfield says more regulations needed to protect astronauts from space debris

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A recent space missile from Russia that blew up an old satellite has people concerned about the danger of space debris. But retired astronaut Chris Hadfield says this isn't a new problem, and there needs to be more international law to protect space. 

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of launching the missile in what they called a "reckless and irresponsible" strike. They said the debris could have damaged to the International Space Station, but Russia rejected the accusations.

The ISS's seven-person crew took shelter in their docked spaceship capsules for two hours after the test as a precaution, allowing for a quick getaway had it been necessary, NASA said.

Hadfield became the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station in 2013.

He spoke with Matt Galloway on The Current about how astronauts protect themselves from space debris, and what needs to be done to reduce the risk.

How alarming is this story to you as somebody who has spent a good deal of time in outer space? 

It has increased the threat to everything that's in low-Earth orbit, including the people that are up on the Chinese space station and friends of mine that are up in the International Space Station.... [There's about a] 10-per-cent greater chance now of debris hitting their vehicle in space. 

So that's definitely an increased concern and it's something that we should not be doing collectively as human beings here around our Earth. 

If you sit quietly on the space station and wait, you can actually hear things hitting the hull.- Chris Hadfield, retired astronaut

Are commanders of the ISS trained in terms of what they should do if space debris is heading their way?

Yeah, it's one of the three big emergencies you train for, Matt. I think it's important to remember the Earth gets hit by 40 tons of natural debris every day ... and lots of those little pieces hit the space station. But it's got armour.

So it's not just human made things in orbit that provide a big threat for the crew on board. We have a long list of threats, but one of them is something puncturing the hull and causing depressurization, and we practise for that. We have procedures. 

And what the crew did in response to this satellite break-up was do a safe haven procedure, where they close the hatches they could. And [then] you're ready to jump into your return vehicle just in case things go terribly wrong. Fortunately, they didn't. 

What was the most dangerous experience you had on board the space station when it came to space debris? 

Occasionally we know there's a big piece coming and we fire the engines on the space station so that we won't run into that piece. And that happens every few months. Sometimes several months can go by where you don't have to do that. 

If you sit quietly on the space station and wait, you can actually hear things hitting the hull. So it's kind of a reminder that you're in both the natural and human-made shooting gallery. 

I'm not an astronaut, but that sounds alarming. 

Well, things aren't alarming. Just sometimes people are alarmed.

But the key is: what are the actual dangers up there? And there are lots of them. One of them is space debris.

Space has been weaponized since the 1970s. There was a machine gun mounted to the outside of the Soviet Almaz Space Station in the early 1970s.... So yeah, that's been going on for a long time. 

This event was egregious. It shouldn't happen. We need international agreements. We need a way to clean up space debris, and we also need a way to punish people for breaking the societal norms here. 

All of that has to happen. But meanwhile, people and machines are working and living in space, and we need to protect them. 

From your perspective, having been there and having studied this extensively, what should that regulation look like? 

Well, the European Union put out a pretty good paper earlier this year, and it's a really good starting point. I think the easiest way to start is with bilateral treaties. 

But if you look at the SALT Anti-Ballistic missile treaties of the 1970s, they were quite effective in some areas of anti-ballistic missiles, but they really didn't get into anti-satellite weapons like these ones. 

And even those talks, although they had long lasting effects, they had a time limit on them. But that's the type of thing we need to pursue. 

And trying to make it global is difficult. So start with bilaterals between the biggest players. There's only four countries in the world that have built and tested anti-satellite weapons. So start with the quadrilateral treaty and then try and work that through to something obviously, through any international organization like the United Nations.

But that's [the] carrot, you also need the stick somehow. And when some countries go too far, you know, other countries respond. And I'm not sure how that would happen, but it's one piece of this puzzle that we've done on Earth. 

There's nothing sacrosanct about space. It's just where our technology is starting to take us and we need to expand our regulatory behaviours and how we control ourselves into Earth orbit as well. 

Written by Philip Drost with files from The Associated Press. Produced by Howard Goldenthal and  Paul MacInnis.