The orbit of the International Space Station (ISS) was urgently adjusted using a module from Russia to avoid a collision with debris from the Fengyun-1C satellite of China, which was created after a weapons test in 2007.
International Space Station (ISS).
On November 10, Russian news agency TASS reported that astronauts aboard the ISS had just activated the thrusters on the Russian Progress MS-18 cargo spacecraft to change the ISS’s orbit to avoid a collision with debris from the Fengyun-1C spacecraft.
According to preliminary data, debris from Fengyun-1C was expected to approach the ISS within 4 hours on the morning of November 12 (Moscow time). After the adjustment, the orbit of the ISS was “stretched” by more than 1,200 meters from its original orbit and temporarily positioned at an altitude of 470.7 km above Earth.
Roscosmos did not specify the size of the debris from the Chinese spacecraft, but experts assess that any collision in space is particularly dangerous, as satellites and space debris move at very high speeds.
Fengyun-1C is a weather satellite from China, launched in 1999 and operated at an altitude of 865 km above the Earth’s surface before ceasing operations in 2002. According to TASS, Fengyun-1C was destroyed by China using an anti-satellite missile launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in 2007.
The New York Times reported that the ISS has conducted at least 29 temporary orbit adjustments since 1999 to avoid collisions with objects in space. In some cases, astronauts have even had to take shelter in the spacecraft’s modules to be ready to evacuate the ISS in case of a dangerous incident.
