The ISS just dodged part of a 20-year-old Chinese rocket

The International Space Station (ISS) had to raise its orbit on Wednesday to reduce the risk of being struck by a piece of space junk.

The maneuver was carried out at 6:10 p.m. ET by firing the thrusters on the docked Progress 91 spacecraft for 3 minutes and 33 seconds, NASA said in a post on its website.

It said the move was made to “provide an extra margin of distance” from a piece of orbital debris, adding that the hazardous object came from a fragment of a Chinese Long March rocket launched 20 years ago. 

“The pre-planned Debris Avoidance Maneuver was coordinated by NASA, Roscosmos, and other space station partners,” NASA said.

The space agency said that if they had not raised the space station’s orbit, the junk would have come “within around 0.4 miles of the station,” a distance that it clearly considered too close for comfort.

The incident has not impacted regular operations aboard the space station, NASA said, adding that the U.S. spacewalk planned for Thursday, May 1, with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, will proceed according to the original schedule.

A collision with a large piece of debris could cause catastrophic damage to the ISS, and threaten the lives of the astronauts living and working there.

As a result, NASA and its partners have systems in place to track the hazardous objects so that it can take evasive action when necessary.

But some incidents are more alarming than others. In November 2021, for example, astronauts on the orbital outpost were ordered to take shelter inside docked spacecraft as the station came close to a cloud of dangerous debris.

The debris was created after Russia destroyed one of its old satellites in an anti-satellite missile test, with the blast apparently creating around 1,500 pieces of debris.

On that occasion, the astronauts stayed inside the spacecraft for around two hours and fortunately no damage was reported.

Astronauts know the risks when they head to space. The good news is that after nearly 25 years of operation, the ISS has never suffered a major hit, suggesting that the avoidance systems are working as they should.

Space-based missile strikes are a rare cause of space debris as most of it is made up of decommissioned satellites or spent rocket parts. Smaller fragments are also created when these objects crash into each other. With the problem worsening, a number of private companies are developing ways of clearing low-Earth orbit of the problematic junk.