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posted by hubie on Monday March 13 2023, @05:07AM   Printer-friendly

Monday's collision avoidance maneuver steered the International Space Station away from a presumed Earth-imaging satellite launched in 2020:

Earlier this week, the International Space Station was forced to adjust its orbit to avoid an encroaching commercial satellite. The object is likely one of many Earth-observing satellites that are falling into and aligning with the space station's orbital path, according to experts.

On Monday, the Progress 83 resupply ship that's docked to the space station fired its engines for just over six minutes, slightly raising the orbit of the ISS in order to avoid an approaching satellite, NASA wrote in a blog post. The space agency did not identify the object, except to say that it was an "Earth observation satellite."

However, there is speculation that the satellite in question may be Argentina's Nusat-17, one of 10 commercial Earth observation satellites form the Aleph-1 constellation operated by Satellogic. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote on Twitter that the orbits of the Satellogic constellation has been gradually decaying and the satellites are now crossing the orbit of the ISS.

The latest ISS maneuver points to a larger issue of the growing number of satellites, both defunct and operational, and debris that pose a threat to orbiting spacecraft. More than 27,000 pieces of orbital debris are currently being tracked by the Department of Defense's global Space Surveillance Network, with lots of smaller pieces also floating around undetected.


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  • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday March 13 2023, @08:45AM (1 child)

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Monday March 13 2023, @08:45AM (#1295869)

    Just a curiosity, is there any "traffic control" for *choosing* orbits. I believe there is some facility provided by e.g. NASA for noticing that two orbiting bodies have a potential for collision, but it seems that such a facility would be better invested at the mission planning stage. For example, if lots of satellites plan to follow precisely on the ISS orbit but staggered by a certain angle, then the possibility of collision is much smaller. One could imagine polar orbits being designated "this" altitude (assuming spherical orbits) and equatorial orbits being designated "that" altitude; I'm sure an expert could do it better of course.

    (Just to remind, circular orbits at a particular altitude have a predetermined number of orbits per day, and two satellites on the same orbit, but staggered, will never collide. Elliptical orbits will sweep through many different altitudes and have a completely different number of orbits per day)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13 2023, @04:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 13 2023, @04:32PM (#1295923)

      In this case, though, it seems that the imaging satellites are in a decaying orbit, so they're going to cross everything below them regardless of where they started.

  • (Score: 2) by TrentDavey on Tuesday March 14 2023, @08:20PM

    by TrentDavey (1526) on Tuesday March 14 2023, @08:20PM (#1296146)

    The other night I swerved to avoid a child ... and just about fell off the couch!
    Badump. I'm here all week.

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