An alert message issued 30 hours in advance made it possible to avoid the collision of the International Space Station (ISS) with a Argentine satellite who roamed the area.
The diversion was successfully orchestrated thanks to the team of scientists from the NASA that it detected the threat in time and ordered the modification of the trajectory.
The experts ordered the activation of the ISS thrusters for a period of six minutes to raise the orbit of the Station and leave the space free for the circulation of the satellite identified. It was a predetermined evasion maneuver (PDAM) initiated at 7:42 a.m. on Monday.
It is not the first time that a phenomenon of “space meddling” that ends up motivating a change of direction of the Station. A report from the North American agency, dated December 2022, reported that the ISS carried out 32 trajectory corrections “by satellites and space debris since 1999”.
Two of the latest diversions occurred last year due to garbage from Cosmos 1408, which Russia destroyed in a anti-satellite weapons test in November 2021, an initiative that received widespread disapproval from the international community.
Regarding the recent maneuver, astronomer Jonathan McDowell, belonging to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained that it would be Nusat-17a satellite operated by the geospatial data company Satellogic that recently moved in said orbit.
Nusat-17, from the constellation Aleph-1was sent into space in the year 2020 and it is one of the ten commercial satellites that assume functions of observation of our planet.
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Just a few days ago the Dragon Endeavor Crew arrived from SpaceX together with the crew of the Crew-6 ship that will replace Crew-5, which left the ISS this Thursday.
Meanwhile, NASA assured that this exit would not have been affected by the diversion maneuver.
In dialogue with the specialized medium Space.com, Sandra Jones -from the Johnson Space Center- explained that “it does not interfere with the phase of any of the programmed movements in the Station”.
Henceforth, the Cargo Dragon CRS-27 from the same company is expected to arrive on March 14.
CA/ED
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