The International Space Station had to move to dodge space junk - NPR

The International Space Station had to occurrence its thrusters this week to marque definite it avoided space junk successful orbit astir Earth.

The presumption fired its thrusters for 5 minutes and 5 seconds successful what NASA called a "Pre-Determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver" astatine 8:25 p.m. ET Monday to summation its region from a portion of what utilized to beryllium a Russian satellite.

NASA says the maneuver accrued the ISS' altitude betwixt 0.2 and 0.8 of a mile. Without the move, the outer debris would person travel wrong astir 3 miles of the abstraction station.

The fragment successful question was from Russia's Cosmos 1408 satellite. Russia destroyed it with a rocket successful November 2021, creating 1,500 pieces of debris, according to NASA. U.S. officials condemned the anti-satellite rocket test, saying it would make hundreds of thousands much pieces of debris successful the coming years.

Space junk is simply a large problem: There are millions of pieces of debris circling Earth, astir of it originating from outer explosions and collisions. And erstwhile objects collide with each other, they tin make adjacent smaller pieces of debris.

Pieces larger than a millimeter fig astir 100 million, portion objects betwixt 1 cm and 10 cm successful diameter fig astir 500,000, and 25,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 cm are known to exist, NASA says.

Space junk tin endanger upwind forecasting and GPS

Space junk poses a peculiar menace to satellites, and successful turn, services satellites supply specified arsenic upwind forecasting and GPS.

"It is of peculiar hazard to the United States due to the fact that the United States is astir apt the astir space-dependent powerfulness around," said Saadia Pekkanen, manager of the Space Law, Data and Policy programme astatine the University of Washington, successful an interview with NPR earlier this year. "Relative to different powers, if thing happens to those satellites, it does impact the civilian, commercialized and subject capabilities of the United States."

Even precise tiny pieces tin beryllium unsafe due to the fact that of the speeds astatine which objects are traveling successful orbit. Average interaction velocity is usually 22,000 mph, but tin beryllium arsenic precocious arsenic 33,000 mph.

Debris astatine altitudes wrong astir 375 miles from the Earth's aboveground volition usually autumn backmost to Earth wrong respective years. But if it's circling astatine 500 miles oregon much out, it volition apt instrumentality hundreds oregon thousands of years for it to travel down.

The International Space Station moves astir erstwhile a twelvemonth to get retired of the mode of unsafe debris. Critical parts of the presumption tin withstand interaction of objects arsenic ample arsenic 1 cm, according to NASA. The bureau didn't specify the size of the Cosmos 1408 fragment that posed a danger.

There are nary planetary binding rules connected however to negociate and forestall the maturation of debris successful space, but the U.S., Russia, China, Japan, France and the European Space Agency person each issued guidelines. Chief among them involves designing and operating caller spacecraft successful a mode that won't marque the occupation worse. There are besides caller technologies being tested to effort to region debris already retired there.