ISS Swerves to Avoid Collision With Earth-Imaging Satellite
upstart writes:
Earlier this week, the International Space Station was forced to adjust its orbit to avoid an encroaching commercial satellite. The object is likely one of many Earth-observing satellites that are falling into and aligning with the space station's orbital path, according to experts.
On Monday, the Progress 83 resupply ship that's docked to the space station fired its engines for just over six minutes, slightly raising the orbit of the ISS in order to avoid an approaching satellite, NASA wrote in a blog post. The space agency did not identify the object, except to say that it was an "Earth observation satellite."
However, there is speculation that the satellite in question may be Argentina's Nusat-17, one of 10 commercial Earth observation satellites form the Aleph-1 constellation operated by Satellogic. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote on Twitter that the orbits of the Satellogic constellation has been gradually decaying and the satellites are now crossing the orbit of the ISS.
The latest ISS maneuver points to a larger issue of the growing number of satellites, both defunct and operational, and debris that pose a threat to orbiting spacecraft. More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris are currently being tracked by the Department of Defense's global Space Surveillance Network, with lots of smaller pieces also floating around undetected.
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