MOSCOW, December 12. /TASS/. In 2022, roughly 70,000 cases of dangerous near-misses involving Russian satellites and the International Space Station (ISS) with space debris were recorded whereas in the previous year, there were over 40,000 such cases, Adviser to the CEO of TsNIImash Maksim Penkov revealed in an interview with the Vestnik Glonass journal published on Monday.

The number of precarious near-misses involving Russian satellites with space debris has risen also because the Starlink orbital cluster deployed by the United States has increased the overall amount of man-made space objects in near-Earth orbit, he explained.

"In particular, in 2021, near-misses with the ISS and satellites from the Russian orbital cluster soared 47% for this reason," Penkov reported.

"The number of space vehicle launches has skyrocketed nowadays and this, naturally, has led to a spike in the amount of man-made space objects, including space debris," he explained.

"The growth of the amount of debris in outer space leads to a larger number of dangerous situations with space vehicles. Over this year, about 70,000 dangerous near-misses involving space vehicles from the Russian orbital cluster, including the International Space Station, with potentially dangerous man-made space objects have been recorded. Throughout 2021, over 40,000 near-misses were registered," he highlighted.

Over 75% of man-made space objects are located in low near-Earth orbits, about another 15% are in highly elliptic orbits, about 5% are in geostationary orbits, 3% are in medium high and around 2% in high near-circular orbits, he specified.