On board the Crew Dragon, Thomas Pesquet and his team warned of the risk of a collision … which was a false alarm

The SpaceX Crew Dragon crew is scared. While the capsule was on its way to the International Space Station (ISS) after takeoff on Friday, April 23rd from Cape Canaveral in Florida, the four astronauts on board, including Thomas Pesquet, were shown as they prepared for sleep, posing the risk of colliding with something. “unknownThe mission command center was official, and the red alert sounded: space debris was to cross their path around 17:43 GMT (19:43 French time), it was said. Futuristic .

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The body, which was too close and too fast, did not allow the crew to proceed with the revocation maneuver. Then the Earth Center asked the astronauts to put on their spacesuits, return to their seats, and lower their protective masks. Then the crew thought the impact was imminent. But at 5:45 p.m. GMT, there’s still nothing, except for the reassuring message from SpaceX, which ensured that an hour of the closest approximation between the capsule and the debris had passed. NASA spokeswoman Kelly Humphries told Futurism that the body “unknown» He finally didn’t come close to 45 km from the Crew Dragon.

«false alarm»

Finally, on Sunday, US Space Command made a point of contact on the issue:After further analysis, the 18th Space Control Squadron quickly determined that the potential link between the capsule and the body was a false alarm. There was no threat of colliding with the Crew Dragon. The appropriate notifications were issued within minutes and the astronauts were able to safely continue their mission.»

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False alert or not, the probability of encountering a debris crew in space becomes less and less rare, as defined in The New York Times , Who also reported the case. “With the increasing number of missile and satellite launches (…) Low Earth Orbit is increasingly strewn with debris such as missile pieces and dead satellites.We can read, forcing the International Space Station to constantly adjust its orbit to avoidUnknown Objects».