Russia is menacing Earth and the ISS.
Close Call
Space vacations may not be as fun as we thought. Imagine being the first space tourist to land on the International Space Station only to get stuck for days and then narrowly avoid colliding with a piece of satellite Russia blew up — scary.
Yet that's exactly what's happening to several crew members, because CBS space news reporter William Harwood broke the news yesterday that the ISS required a "reboost maneuver" Saturday morning.
"The ISS astronauts were told this afternoon a reboost maneuver is being planned for Saturday morning to A) improve downstream trajectory planning and B) to avoid a possible close encounter with a piece of debris from the Russian ASAT," Harwood said online.
ISS: The ISS astronauts were told this afternoon a reboost maneuver is being planned for Saturday morning to A) improve downstream trajectory planning and B) to avoid a possible close encounter with a piece of debris from the Russian ASAT test last 11/15
— William Harwood (@cbs_spacenews) April 22, 2022
Phone Home
Luckily Harwood followed up quickly to say the event shouldn't interfere with Saturday evening's Ax-1 undocking, a trip that was organized by by SpaceX and Axiom Space and required crew members to drink recycled pee while aboard the ISS.
ISS The debris "conjunction" might "go green," meaning additional tracking might show it poses no threat, but the reboost will be carried out anyway, NASA says; the maneuver will not affect the Ax-1 crew's planned undocking from the station Saturday evening, weather permitting
— William Harwood (@cbs_spacenews) April 22, 2022
Considering how many times the undocking has been pushed back it's hard to say when the tourist crew will get to return to Earth, but at least the current threat of collision with Russian space junk is over for now. Harwood did say, however, that debris trajectories will still be monitored for a while.
Continued caution is smart given that Russia has threatened to smash the US with plummeting space junk before — and that's in addition to the escalating violence in Ukraine as President Vladimir Putin continues his invasion.
It seems Russia is equally unwilling to collaborate both on and off Earth.
More on off-world news: Harvard Scientist Says Alien Tech May Have Crashed Into the Pacific Ocean and He Wants It
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