Space station avoids major collision with space junk. 'Without the manoeuvre...'

The International Space Station (ISS) averted a potential impact with space debris on Tuesday (Nov 19). It was repositioned and moved out of the way of approaching space junk, NASA said. Notably, floating garbage in space from old satellites and other equipment has often been cited as a cause of concern by experts.

The orbit of the ISS was raised by station operators who fired the thrusters on the docked Progress 89 spacecraft for just over five minutes. The manoeuvre gave the station buffer that distanced it just enough from a piece of orbital debris. 

The debris belonged to a defence meteorological satellite that is no longer in function and broke up in 2015.

NASA said that the debris was at risk of coming "around 2.5 miles of the station" and the Pre-determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver (PDAM) helped avoid it.

“Without the manoeuvre, ballistics officials estimated that the fragment could have come within around 2.5 miles of the station,” NASA said.

The repositioning did not pose a threat to the space station in any way and has not affected the ongoing activities. On Thursday,  a scheduled launch of the Progress 90 cargo craft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan will take place as expected.

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The ISS is at constant risk of junk in space colliding with it which can prove catastrophic for both the facility and the astronauts. The station orbits around 250 miles above Earth and often changes its position to avoid these impacts.

Astronauts have been instructed to seek shelter when spent rocket parts, defunct satellites, and smaller fragments might pose a threat to the station. Such collisions have happened before, and so the crew is instructed to enter their docked spacecraft in case the station sustains damage. In extreme cases, the crew might need to return to Earth.

Space debris impact

Space junk has become a matter of grave concern and experts say that an accident is bound to happen soon. Researchers from the orbital mapping firm LeoLabs earlier issued a warning, saying that it is like a "ticking time bomb" waiting to happen. 

Earth has almost 30,000 objects bigger than a softball swirling around it, all travelling at great speeds. LeoLabs COO Dan Ceperly told Forbes, "This grim reality means that collisions are not a question of if but when."