The ISS fires boosters to avoid satellite collisions

The International Space Station (ISS) was forced to move out of the way of an Earth research satellite that was directly in its path.

Thrusters on the Progress 83 resupply vessel docked on the ISS, fired for more than six minutes to raise the station’s orbit and prevent a collision.

The Argentinian Earth-Observation satellite, launched in 2020, Nusat-17, is managed by the geospatial information company Satellogic. Dr. Jonathan McDowell, astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted that the constellation Nusat is one of several whose orbits are gradually expanding. on the orbit of the ISS.

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Collision avoidance measures with the ISS are unusual because the space station has made a total of 32 corrections to avoid satellites and space debris since 1999, according to the report. . a 2022 NASA report.

Just last year the ISS made two corrections to avoid flying debris from the Cosmos 1408 satellite, which Russia destroyed in an anti-satellite test (ASAT) in November 2021, Space . reported.

This is when the agency received the first reports of the emergency about 30 hours before the satellite launch.