The International Space Station from the ISS.

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HANDOUT / NASA / AFP

The International Space Station (ISS) had to maneuver on Tuesday to avoid a possible collision with debris from an old Japanese rocket, the third avoidance maneuver this year, NASA said.

The debris would have passed 1.39 kilometers from the ISS, according to NASA, but it was decided to raise the orbit of the station as a precaution.

It was a Russian cargo capsule (Progress), moored at the station, which pushed the ISS a little higher by igniting its thrusters, for two and a half minutes, the operation being controlled in cooperation between the Russian control rooms and American.

According to astronomer Jonathan McDowell, the threatening object was debris from a stage of a Japanese rocket launched in 2018, which disintegrated into 77 pieces in February 2019. The crew members, two Russians and an American, had to be temporarily placed in the Russian part of the ISS, in order to be able to evacuate urgently with the Soyuz capsule in case of danger, which was ultimately not necessary (in a first press release, NASA had indicated that the astronauts would enter the spacecraft).

14 km offset

According to the European Space Agency website, the ISS was about 421 km above the oceans before the operation, and 435 km after.

It spins at around 27,500 km / h: at this speed, even a small object can seriously damage or even destroy a solar panel or other element.

This type of maneuver is regularly necessary, and should become more frequent with the increasing pollution of the Earth's surroundings, by debris from old rockets or satellites launched for six decades, and by the thousands of fragments created by accidental collisions or deliberate, for example with the shipments of anti-satellite missiles by India in 2019 and China in 2007.

The station had to avoid 25 times between 1999 and 2018, according to NASA.

“The Space Station maneuvered three times in 2020 to avoid debris.

In the past two weeks, there have been three potential high-risk conjunctions.

Debris is getting worse!

Tweeted Jim Bridenstine, administrator of NASA, who is demanding $ 15 million from Congress for the Office of Space Trade, a civilian service, to take over surveillance of space objects and coordinate warnings to private satellite operators in the event risk of collision.

To date, a military unit is responsible for space surveillance.

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