The space station just went into evasive action to avoid the dreaded space junk

Humanity has a serious problem with space junk.

On the evening of October 24, NASA announced a maneuver to give the International Space Station “an extra meter of distance” from a fragment of debris (its size was not reported) passing just miles away. The debris comes from Russia’s dubious decision (according to top space junk experts) to blast off the roughly 4,850-pound Russian Cosmos 1408 satellite in late 2021 with a rocket. The explosion created a new ring of debris around Earth.

“We’re going to see consequences from this particular event for decades to come,” Hugh Lewis, a professor of astronautics at the University of Southampton who researches space debris, told Mashable last year. “It was not a good result. It was never going to be good.”

“There was no worse goal with respect to human spaceflight,” Lewis added.

NASA, whose chief Bill Nelson said he was “outraged by this irresponsible and destabilizing action,” is now grappling with the relatively new, problematic space junk.

To move the ISS, the space station fired boosters from the Russian Progress 81 spacecraft (attached to the station) for just over five minutes. NASA flight controllers monitor and direct station activities at ISS Mission Control at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Russia operates the Russian Mission Control Center in Korolev, which is located outside Moscow.

“The booster launch occurred at 8:25 p.m. EDT, and the maneuver had no impact on station operations. Without the maneuver, it was predicted that the fragment could have passed about three miles from the station,” the US said. space agency in a statement. The move was called the “Predetermined Debris Avoidance Maneuver.”

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The placement problem with space junk is that it can create more and more debris. As Mashable previously reported:

The looming problem is that space debris begets more space junk, specifically increasing the chances of more collisions. In 2009, for example, the defunct Russian Cosmos 2251 satellite slammed into an Iridium communications satellite, creating about 2,000 pieces of debris four inches or larger along with countless tiny fragments. In 2013, astronaut Chris Hadfield spotted a “bullet hole” in a space station solar panel — either from space debris or a small meteorite. Humanity has already put large amounts of debris into orbit around the Earth, and their effects are serious and growing. “Spent rockets, satellites and other space debris have accumulated in orbit increasing the potential for collisions with other debris,” NASA wrote in 2016.

Over the next three or four decades, if enough debris eventually accumulates, a cascade of collisions will ensue, an extreme event dubbed “Kessler Syndrome” by Don Kessler, a former senior scientist for orbital debris research at NASA. In 2018, Kessler expressed concern to Mashable about SpaceX’s plans to launch thousands of Starlink satellites into Earth orbit. Already, the private space company has launched more than 1,800 satellites, with plans for thousands more. SpaceX has plans to move faulty or old satellites into Earth’s atmosphere, but the sheer number of satellites still means that many objects are orbiting the planet. Among other mega-satellite constellations, Amazon plans to launch over 3,200 satellites as well.

Ideally, abandoned satellites and spacecraft are controlled so that they gradually fall into the atmosphere and burn up, in a process called atmospheric drag. NASA, and its space partners, will continue to deal with the debris created by the exploded Cosmos 1408 satellite.

“This debris field will expand in size and spread into a ring around Earth that will likely remain in orbit to threaten other space objects for years to come.”

“This debris field will expand in size and spread into a ring around Earth that will likely remain in orbit to threaten other space objects for years to come,” the Secure World Foundation, an organization that promotes sustainable and peaceful uses of space. he said in a statement last year. “Regardless of the reasoning, deliberately creating orbital debris of this magnitude is extremely irresponsible.”