The International Space Station had to perform an evasive maneuver to avoid colliding with an Argentine satellite

the International Space Station (ISS) This week he was threatened with the passage of a Argentine satellite near your area. That is why, after receiving the alert about 30 hours ago, this Monday, scientists from a pot They asked a change in its trajectoryin order to prevent both bodies from meeting.

After projections and estimations, it was concluded that the most effective is to perform a predetermined evasion maneuver (PDAM). And so, at 7:42 a.m. that day, the green light was given for the operation and the ISS engines were run for about six minutes to raise the station’s orbit and allow safe passage of the Argentine artifact.

Although NASA did not clarify this fact, astronomer Jonathan McDowell did Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, He indicated that it would be Nosat 17operated by the Geospatial Data Corporation Satellitesbecause it is one of the satellites seen recently in this orbit.

Nusat-17, from the constellation A-1to space in 2020 It is one of the ten commercial satellites that fulfill missions note From earth.

These types of maneuvers, derived from overlapping in space, are becoming more frequent. According to the North American agency’s December 2022 report, the iss total 32 trajectory corrections by satellites and space debris since 1999.

Two of them occurred last year because of rubbish out Cosmos 1408which Russia destroyed in a Testing anti-satellite weapons In November 2021, which was strongly condemned by the international community.

This week’s maneuver took place at a time when there was a lot of movement on the station. Just a few days ago SpaceX Dragon Endeavor crew along with Crew members 6 that will replace Crew 5that left the International Space Station on Thursday.

NASA confirmed that this departure was not affected by the recent course change. In an interview with the specialized media space.comSandra Jones of the Johnson Space Center commented:It does not interfere with the phase of any of the movements programmed in the station.”.

On the other hand, the Cargo Dragon CRS-27 from the same company is expected to arrive on March 14.

The crew, who will spend six months at the station, successfully takes off Cape Canaveral -in United State– last March 2 after Two failed attempts.

The launch was originally scheduled for Sunday, but had to be pushed back to Monday so that scientists could perform additional thermal analysis of the panels on the capsule’s exterior, as well as check some of the helium canisters on the Falcon 9 rocket.

However, on that Monday, less than three minutes before liftoff, a sudden problem was discovered with the triethylaluminum triethylboron (TEA-TEB) flow used to start the rocket’s first stage engines and again aborted the launch.

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