Interfax is reporting that the engines of the Progress MS-24 resupply spacecraft docked with the International Space Station (ISS) were burned on Friday to prevent the station’s possible collision with space debris, Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos said.
“The engines of the resupply spacecraft were activated at 6:07 p.m. Moscow time. They functioned for 316.5 seconds and increased the station’s velocity by 0.5 m/s,” Roscosmos said on Telegram.
The maneuver raised the ISS orbit’s altitude by around 900 meters, according to preliminary data. Following the evasive maneuver, the ISS orbit’s minimum altitude is 419.1 kilometers and its maximum is 436.1 kilometers.
Expedition 70 crew members currently working on the ISS include Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Konstantin Borisov, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara, European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa.