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Usually, this allows for the Station to receive a heads up and conduct a Pre-Determined Debris Avoidance Maneuver (PDAM) to move the orbital outpost into a different path and thus avoid a potential collision.<\/p>\n
Rare events are classed as Red Late Conjunctions, where the threat is spotted late \u2013 with no time to conduct a PDAM \u2013 and is inside a path that has a chance \u2013 albeit very small \u2013 of hitting the Station.<\/p>\n
One such incident occurred on March 13, 2009 \u2013 when a \u201cRED Late\u201d Conjunction threat resulted in NASA\u2019s Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke, Russian Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov and NASA\u2019s Sandra Magnus being asked to evacuate into the \u201csafe haven\u201d of the docked Soyuz, as the \u201825090 PAM-D\u2019 debris closed in on the Station.<\/p>\n
The debris passed by the Station at a safe distance, allowing for nominal operations to resume.<\/p>\n
![\"2015-07-16-155834\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/2015-07-16-155834-350x221.jpg\")
NASA noted this latest debris threat originated from an old Russian weather satellite, with sources (L2) adding it was \u201cObject 36912\u201d in the US catalog list \u2013 debris from a Meteor-2 satellite that was launched on a Vostok-2M rocket in 1979 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.<\/p>\nSpaceX launch tickets
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Per Flight Rule B4-101, a \u201clate conjunction\u201d call results in the crew being ordered to close the hatches between Station modules and enter the Soyuz vehicles \u2013 which serve as lifeboats during their docked stay at the ISS \u2013 before TCA (Time of Closest Approach) breaches the 10 minute mark.<\/p>\n
![\"2015-07-16-161808\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/2015-07-16-161808-350x238.jpg\")
During Thursday\u2019s event, the three members of the Station \u2013 Commander Gennady Padalka, Mikhail Kornienko and NASA astronaut Scott Kelly \u2013 closed the hatches and took up residency onboard Soyuz TMA-16M. They stayed in the Soyuz for around 10 minutes, according to Roscosmos.<\/p>\nPer L2 ISS Status, it was confirmed the event was a Late Conjunction threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cLate Notice Conjunction: Crew Shelter in Place. This morning the Flight Control Team was notified of a conjunction with insufficient time to execute a Predetermined Debris Avoidance Maneuver (PDAM).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ISS crew sheltered in place until the Time of Closest Approach (TCA) passed without incident at 7:01 AM CDT.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"2014-11-14](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/2014-11-14-00_01_59-Soyuz-TMA-16-launches-for-journey-to-ISS-%E2%80%93-Safe-Haven-evaluations-_-NASASpaceFli-350x232.jpg\")
The order would be to initiate an emergency departure from the Station, had the debris threat realizes itself into an impact and caused a breach of the life support environment.<\/p>\nSuch larger debris threats do have the capability of puncturing one of the Station\u2019s modules, as was later noted via the 2009 threat of the \u201cyo weight\u201d that was originally part of a Delta PAM-D stage used to launch GPS 37 in 1993.<\/p>\n
However, the odds of the Station \u2013 racing around at 17,500mph \u2013 being hit by a major debris strike are extremely small.<\/p>\n
![\"2015-07-16-153913\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/2015-07-16-153913-350x262.jpg\")
Also, the ISS does have some protection against the smaller MicroMeteoroid and Orbital Debris (MMOD) strikes.<\/p>\nThe ISS sports a number of battle scars from such strikes, ranging from impacts to the arrays, windows and handrails \u2013 the latter pointed out ahead of EVAs, where the spacewalkers are told to be careful where they put their hands, due to the shape edges that usually surround the impact point.<\/p>\n
Such sharp edges could cut their EMU gloves, which subsequently threaten the termination of an EVA, such as the scenario that occurred to STS-118 spacewalker Rick Mastracchio, who was sent back to the Quest airlock after a cut was observed in his glove during on routine half-hourly check.<\/p>\n
The Station\u2019s modules are outfitted with nextel\/Kevlar shielding, which has been tested to show it can successfully withstand MMOD strikes.<\/p>\n
![\"2015-07-16-152619\"](\"https:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/2015-07-16-152619-350x192.jpg\")
Such examples of testing include ESA\u2019s evaluations into the nextel\/Kevlar material used to protect its ATV spacecraft, showing it could protect the vehicle\u2019s hull after test firing a 7.5 mm-diameter aluminium bullet at 7 km\/s.<\/p>\n\u201cThe stuffing fabric and a surrounding sheet was thoroughly shredded by the impact, but the overall mass and energy of the debris was sufficiently dissipated that it harmlessly scorched the innermost 3-mm-thick aluminium wall,\u201d noted the test results.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s event is understood to be only the fourth time in ISS history that the Station\u2019s crew have been told to take up the \u201csafe haven\u201d of the docked Soyuz.<\/p>\n
With the threat passing without incident, the three crewmembers have returned to their duties, which include continued work on maintenance of the troublesome Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA).<\/p>\n
(Images: Via ESA, NASA, space.skyrocket.de and L2).<\/p>\n
(Click here: http:\/\/www.nasaspaceflight.com\/l2\/ \u2013 to view how you can support NSF and access the best space flight content on the entire internet).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Life aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has returned to normal after a late conjunction threat forced the Station\u2019s crew into contingency operations. The implementation of Flight Rule B4-101 \u2013 resulting in the crew taking up the \u201csafe haven\u201d of a docked Russian Soyuz vehicle \u2013 was required during a close pass of debris from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[233,8970],"class_list":["post-39292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-iss","tag-mmod"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}