Space station ISS had to avoid space debris

The distance from the station to Earth is now 418.6 kilometers, 1.2 kilometers higher than before. There are currently eleven astronauts on board the ISS. Four of them will return to Earth aboard the US space shuttle Crew Dragon by the end of the week, including Russian cosmonaut Anna Kikina. It is said that there was no danger to the crew.

A similar maneuver from the ISS was last announced at the end of April 2022. At that time, the engines of the docked Russian space freighter “Progress MS-18” were on for about ten minutes. The flight height of the ISS was increased by 1.8 kilometers due to the impulse, Roskosmos announced at the time.

Scrap metal makes space travel increasingly dangerous
Debris from decommissioned satellites and the remains of old rockets are making space travel increasingly dangerous, especially near Earth. Even small, sharp splinters can rip menacing holes in starships or destroy probes. Experts fear that without countermeasures, thousands of fragments will make space flight nearly impossible at some point.

Millions of pieces of debris in orbit around the Earth
Using model calculations, scientists estimate that there are a total of about a million particles in orbit that are larger than a centimeter. If a propeller of this size were to hit a satellite, experts say it would have the destructive power of a hand grenade. But millions and millions of smaller pieces of debris, just a few millimeters in size, can also cause significant damage.