Space Station keeps dodging debris from China's 2007 satellite weapon test
The International Space Station had to fire thrusters from a docked spacecraft last month to avoid a piece of debris that has been circling the globe for the nearly 18 years since the Chinese government blasted apart one of its own satellites in a weapons test.
The evasive maneuver was the second in just six days for the space station, which has four NASA astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts aboard. That is the shortest interval ever between such actions, illustrating the slowly worsening problem of space junk in orbit. Debris is an increasingly vexing issue not only for NASA, but also for companies such as SpaceX and OneWeb seeking to protect the thousands of small satellites they send into space to provide high-speed internet.
Analysts say the most worrisome debris cloud stems from Fengyun 1C, a weather satellite that the Chinese government intentionally destroyed with a missile in 2007. The high-altitude explosion created an estimated 3,500 pieces of debris, according to records maintained by the U.S. Space Force; most of them are still in orbit. They get slightly closer to the atmosphere with each pass, but an analysis shortly after the event predicted it would take more than 100 years for the debris to hit the atmosphere and largely burn up.
“A decade and a half later they’re still seeing problems because the stuff just keeps raining down,” said Marlon Sorge, executive director of the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation’s center for orbital and reentry debris studies.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/12/23/iss-space-junk-satellite-china-us/
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