Leonard David's INSIDE OUTER SPACE

Image credit: Roscosmos/NASA

For the second time in a month, the Russian-provided Progress MS-22 resupply spacecraft took the International Space Station (ISS) away from a collision with space debris.

Coupled to the ISS, the Progress and its engines fired for 135 seconds, giving out an impulse to boost the orbiting facility to 260 miles (419 kilometers), explains a Roscosmos Telegram posting.

“For the entire time of the station’s flight, 336 corrections were made to the altitude of its orbit (of which 35 were for the purpose of evading space debris), including 185 with the help of our Progress,” the Roscosmos posting adds.

Credit: The Aerospace Corporation’s Space Safety Institute

Dangerous situations

According to Maxim Penkov, Advisor to the General Director of TsNIIMash JSC, “the automated system for warning about dangerous situations in near-Earth space in 2022 recorded more than 16 thousand approaches of the ISS and Russian spacecraft with dangerous objects in orbit,” as reported by Russia’s TASS news agency.

Penkov adds that five space debris avoidance maneuvers were performed for the ISS, which “prevented the loss of a unique space complex worth more than 200 billion dollars, and also ensured the life and health of the station crew.”