The International Space Station has changed course.
Moscow:
The head of Russia’s space agency said the International Space Station (ISS) had to steer clear of debris from a US launch vehicle on Friday, the latest in a series of incidents where debris Space disruption forces astronauts to respond.
Calls to monitor and regulate space debris, or space junk, have increased since Russia conducted an anti-satellite missile test last month. This creates a field of orbital debris that US officials say will jeopardize space activities for years.
Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, said on Friday that the ISS was forced to move due to space junk from a US launch vehicle that was put into orbit in 1994.
Roscosmos said the station’s orbit, during an unscheduled maneuver by mission control, dropped 310 meters (339 yards) for nearly three minutes to avoid a close encounter.
Rogozin added that the maneuver will not affect the planned launch of the Soyuz MS-20 rocket on December 8 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and its docking to the ISS.
Space debris includes abandoned launch vehicles or spacecraft components floating in space and potentially colliding with satellites or the ISS.
In an article published in the Financial Times on Thursday, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Russia’s destruction of a satellite last month risks turning space into a dumping ground.
“Unless we change course, space opportunities to improve our lives on Earth could be closed for generations,” he wrote.
Space debris also forced NASA on Tuesday to postpone a spacewalk to replace a faulty antenna on the ISS. Last month, the ISS made a brief maneuver to avoid the debris of a defunct Chinese satellite.
In separate comments on Friday, Roscosmos said it hopes NASA Director Bill Nelson will visit Russia in the first half of 2022 to discuss further cooperation on the ISS.
