The International Space Station has to drift off again, this time to an Argentinean satellite

In the news: NASA said in a statement that Progress MS-22, a Russian spacecraft docked on the International Space Station, had to activate its engines for six minutes to raise the station’s orbit. blog post.

• NASA is talking about an Earth observation satellite that will get very close to the International Space Station. If the space station had not been set aside, it would have come within about 1.7 miles of the station, which is a very short distance into space. The International Space Station moves at a speed of 7.6 kilometers per second.
• 20 minutes before the maneuver, NASA informed the crew that there was no risk of collision anyway, the reports say Space news. Since the MS-22’s Progress thrusters had already been activated, the maneuver was performed anyway.
• A NASA spokesperson did not say which satellite it was. It is known that it is an Argentine Earth observation satellite that was launched in 2020. It is probably the NuSat-17 satellite, which is a satellite that was put into orbit around the Earth by the Argentine company Satellogik.
• The orbit of NuSat-17 and nine other satellites launched simultaneously by the company is gradually fading away. This may cause problems for the International Space Station in the future.

generating a problem

I noticed: The International Space Station has to perform more and more evasive maneuvers as more objects are put into Earth orbit.

• To date, more than 30 such maneuvers have been performed since the station’s commissioning. Last year, for example, the International Space Station had to give way twice to space debris from a Russian weapons test.
• Experts are increasingly concerned about space debris. There are now tens of thousands of pieces in orbit around the Earth, according to Data from the European Space Agency (European Space Agency). There is a fear that each collision will lead to more scrap, causing a chain reaction.
• This could mean that manned flights are increasingly at risk of being hit.