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Station Maneuvers to Avoid Orbital Debris

April 22, 2025: International Space Station Configuration. Five spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Dragon crew and cargo spacecraft, the Soyuz MS-27 crew ship, and the Progress 90 and 91 resupply ships.
April 22, 2025: International Space Station Configuration. Five spaceships are parked at the space station including the SpaceX Dragon crew and cargo spacecraft, the Soyuz MS-27 crew ship, and the Progress 90 and 91 resupply ships.
NASA

The Progress 91 thrusters were fired at 6:10 p.m. EDT Wednesday for 3 minutes, 33 seconds, to raise the orbit of the International Space Station to provide an extra margin of distance from a piece of orbital debris from a fragment of a Chinese Long March rocket launched in 2005. The pre-planned Debris Avoidance Maneuver was coordinated by NASA, Roscosmos, and other space station partners.

Without the maneuver, NASA estimated the fragment could have come within around .4 miles of the station.

There is no impact to operations aboard the space station and it will not affect U.S. spacewalk 93 on Thursday, May 1, with NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers. 

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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