The presence of space debris is an increasingly recurring problem for astronauts on the International Space Station. This Tuesday 30, for example, NASA was forced to cancel a spacewalk that had been scheduled for several days. The reason was a possible security threat from nearby debris.
According CBS, the determination was made in the early hours of today after receiving a debris notification for the International Space Station. It has not been mentioned which was the origin of the same, but the first suspicions pointed to the recent explosion of a satellite carried out with a Russian missile, something that has not been confirmed or publicly ruled out. This situation was controversial, since it forced the astronauts to take shelter in the life-saving capsules of the ISS.
Anyway, the cancellation of the spacewalk it was merely a precaution. This was explained by NASA with a brief statement in his blog and social networks: “Due to the lack of opportunities to properly assess the risk it could pose to astronauts, the teams have decided to delay the November 30 spacewalk until more information is available.”
To bring reassurance, the authorities have mentioned that the risk faced by astronauts on the International Space Station was just 7% above the normal parameter of 1 in 2,700 possibilities of suffering a spacesuit perforation.
Space debris is a permanent danger to the International Space Station
The activity scheduled for today, and then aborted, had as protagonists Thomas Marshburn and Kayla barron. The members of the current crew of the International Space Station they had to replace an S-band radio antenna it was not working properly. The singular fact is that it was the first spacewalk for Barron, who will now have to wait for its rescheduling.
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, dealing with debris is an increasingly recurring problem for the International Space Station. Recall that so far in November, in addition to the cancellation of the walk and the Russian missile episode, the ISS also had to perform a maneuver to dodge a piece of space junk. The latter was caused by the appearance of a fragment of the Chinese satellite Fengyun-1C, destroyed in 2007.
While last June, astronauts detected the perforation of one of the robotic arms of the International Space Station; situation that has also occurred due to the presence of objects that travel at high speed through space.