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International Space Station (photo from 2011)
Photo: - / AFP
Course corrections in space: The International Space Station (ISS) has had to change its trajectory to avoid debris from a Soviet spy satellite destroyed seven months ago.
This was announced by the head of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, on Telegram on Thursday.
The engines of the docked Progress spacecraft have altered the space station's trajectory to avoid dangerously approaching debris from the Kosmos-1408 satellite.
When testing an anti-satellite weapon on November 15, 2021, the Russian military destroyed the artificial celestial body.
Even then there was a sharp protest from the USA because the debris could endanger the ISS.
When the space station first flew through the debris field, the crew had to put on space suits to be on the safe side and go into the escape capsule.
But overall, the Russian military saw no threat to the station.
The Soviet reconnaissance satellite Kosmos-1408 was launched in 1982.
It worked for two years and then stayed in space.
Three Russian cosmonauts, two Americans, one American and one Italian are currently working on the ISS.
The German astronaut Matthias Maurer only returned to Earth in May.
He spent 175 days on the International Space Station and was the fourth German there.
It orbited the earth more than 2700 times in around 4100 hours.
to take a critical look at tourist visits to space
Maurer drew mixed conclusions about tourist visits to the International Space Station.
The space tourists launched in the US needed a lot of help, the German said.
It also got tight with eight people on the ISS.
On the other hand, the stay of the Japanese space tourist Yusaku Maezawa in December went "excellent".
The group of tourists - consisting of the Spanish-American astronaut Michael López-Alegría, the US entrepreneur Larry Connor, the Israeli entrepreneur Eytan Stibbe and the Canadian investor Mark Pathy - was in April with a "Crew Dragon" space capsule from the Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome in the US State of Florida started.
The trip to the ISS was organized by the private space company Axiom Space in cooperation with NASA and Elon Musk's company SpaceX.
jok/dpa
