Russian authorities filed airspace notices on Monday warning airplanes to avoid the Plesetsk launch site roughly 650 miles north of Moscow. It is the same location where an earlier Russian antisatellite missile lifted off in December 2020, though that test did not strike any target. At about the same time, NASA astronauts on the space station were abruptly awakened by a mission control official in Houston who instructed the astronauts to take shelter in their spacecraft. “Hey Mark, good morning, sorry for the early call,” said a NASA official in Houston, speaking to Mark Vande Hei, one of four NASA astronauts currently on the space station. That weapon test created a swarm of roughly 2,300 pieces of debris.

Source: International New York Times November 16, 2021 01:13 UTC