The International Space Station was forced to maneuver to avoid a collision with a satellite.. According to Space. com, the maneuver was made on March 6.

In order to evade the satellite, the ISS turned on the engines on the Progress spacecraft, which is now docked to it.. The engines worked for just over six minutes, lifting the station's orbit..

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The course correction occurred with a sufficient margin of time: NASA received a rendezvous message 30 hours before the expected collision with the satellite. The specialists calculated the adjustment, and the station crew, together with the flight control centers of NASA and Roscosmos, were preparing to turn on the engines. Approximately 20 minutes before the alleged approach, information was received that the collision would not take place, but the engines were already on, so the maneuver was nevertheless made.

The spacecraft evaded by the ISS was probably an Argentine Earth observation satellite that was launched in 2020, according to Sandra Jones of the Johnson Space Center.. Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believes that the craft was Nusat-17, noting the breakup of an orbital constellation of satellites..

Nusat-17 is one of a dozen commercial satellites launched in 2020 and operated by geospatial data company Satellogic. According to McDowell, the constellation Nusat is one of several whose orbits are slowly approaching that of the ISS..

It is worth noting that evasive maneuvers are not unusual for the ISS.. According to NASA, from 1999 to 2022, the station performed 32 evasive maneuvers to avoid collision with space debris and satellites..

It took two orbital adjustments last year to avoid collisions with debris from the Kosmos 1408 satellite that Russia destroyed in an anti-satellite weapon test (ASAT) in November 2021..

Earlier, the Russian state concern Roscosmos launched the Soyuz MS-23 spacecraft to the ISS, which will replace the damaged Soyuz MS-22 at the station. The new ship is supposed to return to Earth Russian cosmonauts Sergei Prokopiev and Dmitry Petelin, as well as NASA astronaut Frank Rubio.