The Worldwide Area Station (ISS) simply took evasive motion to dodge a fraction of a satellite destroyed in a November 2021 Russian anti-satellite check.
On Monday (Oct. 24) at 8:25 p.m. EDT (0025 GMT on Oct. 25), the ISS crew fired the thrusters on Progress 81, a Russian cargo ship connected to the station, for a total of 5 minutes and 5 seconds to keep away from the particles fragment, according to a NASA statement (opens in new tab).
This “Pre-Decided Particles Avoidance Maneuver” (PDAM) was carried out with a purpose to “present the advanced an additional measure of distance away from the anticipated observe” of the particles fragment, company officers stated.
The maneuver raised the ISS’s altitude by 0.2 miles (0.32 kilometers) at apogee (its farthest level from Earth) and 0.8 miles (1.3 km) at perigee (its closest level to Earth), in keeping with NASA. The thruster firing didn’t have an effect on regular space station operations.
Associated: Russian anti-satellite missile test draws condemnation from space companies and countries
The particles fragment that prompted the avoidance maneuver was created by a Russian check of a direct ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missile conducted on Nov. 15, 2021. The missile, launched from the bottom, destroyed a defunct Soviet satellite often called Cosmos 1408 that had been out of fee for the reason that Eighties.
“There’s actually no purpose they need to have used such an enormous goal,” astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Middle for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told Space.com at the time. “They may have used a smaller goal and generated much less particles.”
The check has since drawn widespread condemnation from space businesses and space coverage consultants worldwide and prompted astronauts aboard the ISS to take shelter.
This isn’t the primary time the International Space Station has needed to keep away from particles left over from the Russian ASAT check. In June 2022, the space station made a similar maneuver to keep away from a fraction of Cosmos 1408.
Within the wake of the Russian ASAT check performed on Cosmos 1408, a number of nations have made commitments not to perform destructive ASAT tests to assist stop the proliferation of space debris in orbit. These embrace the Republic of Korea, Germany, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, the US and the UK.
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