ISS Dodges Chinese Space Junk

ISS will perform a brief manoeuvre on Wednesday to dodge a fragment of a defunct Chinese satellite, Russian space agency Roscosmos said. The station crewed by seven astronauts will climb 1,240 metres higher to avoid a close encounter with the fragment and will settle in an orbit 470.7 km (292 miles) above the Earth. It did not say how large the debris was.

The agency said that to “In dodge the ‘space junk’, specialists have calculated how to correct the orbit of the International Space Station.  The station will rely on the engines of the Progress space truck that is docked to it to carry out the move.

An ever-swelling amount of space debris is threatening satellites hovering around Earth, making insurers leery of offering coverage to the devices that transmit texts, maps, videos and scientific data.Space junk is a growing problem as defunct satellites, bits of spacecraft and leftover rocket parts clog orbit.NASA has said the ISS typically has to dodge space debris-about once a year on average that if another object is projected to come within a few kilometres of the ISS. The will normally manoeuvre away from the object if the chance of a collision exceeds 1 in 10,000.

There are currently three astronauts on the ISS: Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov of Roscosmos and NASA‘s Mark Vande Hei. Four other astronauts recently returned from orbit with the end of the SpaceX Crew-2 mission. The SpaceX Crew-3 mission is scheduled to launch later on Wednesday.