Space Station, Shuttle move to avoid bad driver

William Atkins
Monday, 23 March 2009 18:21

Science - Space

On Sunday, March 22, 2009, the International Space Station crew and the STS-119 Discovery crew performed an emergency maneuver in order to avoid a piece of Chinese space junk heading straight for them. Where's a space cop when you need one?



The Space Station Discovery is docked to the International Space Station (ISS) as the STS-119 Shuttle crew helps the Space Station crew add the fourth starboard Integrated Truss Assembly (S6) and fourth set of solar panels and batteries to the Station.

However, regular activities were abruptly halted on Sunday when NASA ground controllers advised them that a 4-inch (10-centimeter) diameter piece of space debris (junk) was heading straight for the Station.

The Chinese piece of space junk was from an old (launched in 1999) Chinese satellite that broke apart in 2000. The debris was in a similar altitude as the Station/Shuttle but in a little bit different inclination, which means the piece of junk would pass by the Station/Shuttle twice in each orbit (kinda like two circles meeting at two common points).

If they did not move the Station from its current orbit, the space junk was predicted to have collided with the ISS the next day, Monday, March 23, 2009—in fact, the collision would have happened while two of the astronauts were outside performing the third and final spacewalk of the STS-119 mission.

So, the crewmembers hustled themselves late Sunday afternoon to accomplish this important but unexpected task as quickly as possible.

Shuttle commander Lee Archambault stepped on the “accelerator” of the Discovery at about 4:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), 2000 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), and the steering jets moved both the Space Shuttle and the Space Station into a new position that reduces their chances of colliding with the space junk.

Page two discusses the final stage of the maneuver.