On Tuesday, March 14, the International Space Station (ISS) was scheduled to perform a debris avoidance maneuver to avoid another space debris. Roscosmos, Russia’s federal space agency, said the incident occurred at 7:54 am ET (11:54 am GMT) on Tuesday. The Russian Progress MS-22 cargo capsule, now docked with the orbiting laboratory, fired its engines for 135 seconds to bring the station to a safe location and set its average altitude to 260 miles (419 km) above the Earth’s surface.

This is the second time the International Space Station has had to perform such a maneuver in a month. On March 6, the same Progress capsule ignited its engines for six minutes to avoid a possible collision with a commercial Earth-imaging satellite. According to the 2022 NASA report, from 1999 until the report’s release, the ISS had to perform similar maneuvers to avoid satellites and tracked debris. 32 times in total.

In 2022, the ISS perform two separate evasive maneuvers, To avoid debris from the November 2021 Russian anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) test condemned by the international community.

Such events are forced cancel the spacewalk and encouraged astronauts to take cover Open on the ISS. The frequency of these events is increasing as space flight activity increases around the world. Low Earth orbit continues to become more and more crowded with satellites and bits of space debris; to an international agreement to solve the dangerous problem of orbital debris. To date, no possible solution has yet been found as more objects are placed in orbit.

And the problem of orbital debris could snowball; As more and more space debris fill Earth’s orbit, risk Collisions between pieces of space debris growing – and such collisions will create even more pieces of debris. NASA plans to operate the ISS by 2030, after which it will plunge the laboratory to a feverish death over the open ocean. The agency is already planning the development of a spacecraft that will assist in decommissioning.