International Space Station dodges 2nd piece of space junk in 6 days

The International Space Station just dodged a piece of debris for the second time in less than a week.

Russia’s robotic Progress 89 freighter, which has been docked to the ISS since August, fired its thrusters for about 3.5 minutes on Monday morning (Nov. 25) to get the station clear of a hunk of space junk.

“The debris avoidance maneuver positioned the orbital outpost farther away from a satellite fragment nearing the station’s flight path,” NASA officials wrote in an update on Monday.

The burn began at 4:49 a.m. EST (0949 GMT) and raised the station’s orbit by about 1,650 feet (500 meters), according to the Russian state-owned news agency TASS, which cited a statement from the nation’s space agency Roscosmos.

Progress 89 performed a similar burn on Nov. 19. That one lasted about 5.5 minutes and ensured that the ISS steered clear of a fragment from a “defunct defense meteorological satellite” that broke apart in 2015, NASA officials said.

Related: How often does the International Space Station have to dodge space debris?

Low Earth orbit, where the space station flies, is getting more and more crowded these days. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), about 10,200 active satellites circle the planet at the moment. Most of them belong to SpaceX’s Starlink broadband megaconstellation, which currently consists of about 6,700 operational craft.

The debris population is far larger still. ESA estimates that Earth orbit harbors about 40,500 objects at least 4 inches (10 centimeters) wide, 1.1 million pieces between 0.4 inches and 4 inches (1 to 10 cm) in diameter and 130 million that are at least 1 millimeter wide.

Even these tiny shards can be dangerous to satellites or crewed craft like the ISS, given the tremendous speeds at which they travel. For example, at the station’s average altitude of 250 miles (400 kilometers), orbital velocity is about 17,500 mph (28,160 kph).

Dodging debris isn’t a rare occurrence, as the events of the past week show. Indeed, a December 2022 NASA report found that the ISS had performed evasive burns 32 times since 1999.

Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, “Out There,” was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.