The crew of SpaceX's Crew Dragon have scared off.
As the capsule en route to the International Space Station (ISS) after taking off Friday April 23 from Cape Canaveral base in Florida, the four astronauts on board, including Thomas Pesquet, were briefed as they prepared. sleeping, from a risk of collision with an "
unknown
"
object
.
The command center of the mission was formal, and sounded the red alert: a space debris was going to cross their path around 17:43 GMT (19:43, French time), as
Futurism
recounts
.
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The object, too close, too fast, did not allow the crew to proceed to an avoidance maneuver.
The ground center then instructed the astronauts to put on their spacesuits, return to their seats and lower their protective visors.
The crew then believed the impact was imminent.
But, at 5:45 p.m. GMT, still nothing, except the reassuring message from SpaceX, which ensured that the hour of the closest approximation between the capsule and the debris had passed.
NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries told Futurism that the "
unknown
"
object
ultimately did not come within 45 km of Crew Dragon.
"
False alert
"
Finally, on Sunday, US Space Command made a point of communicating on the matter: “
After further analysis, the 18th Space Control Squadron quickly determined that the potential conjunction between the capsule and the object was a false alarm.
There was never a threat of collision with Crew Dragon.
Appropriate notifications were made within minutes and the astronauts were able to continue their mission safely.
"
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False alarm or not, the probability for a crew to encounter debris in space is becoming less and less rare, as specified by the
New York Times
, which also reported the case. "
With the increasing number of rocket and satellite launches (...) low Earth orbit is increasingly cluttered with debris such as pieces of rockets and dead satellites
", we can read, forcing the ISS constantly adjusting its orbit to avoid "
unknown objects
".
