ISS prepares to evade approaching Chinese space debris before NASA-SpaceX Crew-3 launch

The International Space Station (ISS) has an extremely important job to do before NASA and SpaceX’s Crew-3 team arrives on November 11. The orbiting laboratory has a piece of space debris racing towards it which it will have to dodge to avoid any mishap. NASA's International Space Station program manager Joel Montalbano revealed in a press briefing on Wednesday that scientists are tracking the flying debris and will perform a debris avoidance maneuver six hours ahead of the launch, as per Space.com’s report.

Debris from Chinese satellite approaches the ISS

The Russian space agency Roscosmos also informed about the scenario through a Twitter update. According to the agency, the maneuver will begin around 1:45 am (IST) on November 11 where the thrusters on the visiting Progress MS-18 cargo ship will be fired for 361 seconds to raise the altitude of the ISS by 1,240 metres in its orbit. 

Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who tracks and classifies objects in space, informed through his post that the debris object named 35114 racing towards the ISS was once part of the Chinese weather satellite, Fengyun-1C that was launched in May 1999. After the satellite stopped functioning in 2002, the Chinese military dismantled it with a sub-orbital missile five years later. According to McDowell, the object approaching the space station is part of the debris that emerged after the blast. Besides, the parent satellite was originally at a higher altitude but the atmospheric drag has brought it nearly to the same level as the ISS. McDowell further said that the object and the ISS are estimated to come closest on November 12.

Currently, the space station has three astronauts- Mark Vande Hei from NASA and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, who will soon be joined by Crew-3 astronauts- Raja Chari, Tom Mashburn, Kayla Barron and Matthias Maurer. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket will liftoff carrying the four members from the Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7.33 am (IST) on Thursday, November 11.

Image: Twitter/@roscosmos