MOSCOW. Jan 27 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's Mission Control plans to adjust the orbit of the International Space Station so it can dodge a fragment of China's Fengyun-1C weather monitoring satellite.
"The orbit will be adjusted by all means. We have sent our proposals on when the maneuver should be performed to our American colleagues. The decision on when this will be done will be made by Friday evening," a source at Mission Control told Interfax-AVN.
NASA said on its website earlier that fragments of the Chinese satellite could pass in dangerous vicinity of the ISS.
The ISS had encountered several dangerously flying fragments of the same Chinese satellite, hit by a Chinese ballistic missile in January 2007, before, last in mid-December.
When warned about the threat in advance, the ISS will perform an avoidance maneuver by rising to a higher orbit and changing the speed.
But if space junk is spotted too late and the station remains unprepared for the maneuver, the crew will take shelter in the Russian Soyuz TMA manned spacecraft. But this has happened just a few times," the source said.
The ISS is inhabited by the crew of the 30th expedition: Commander Daniel Burbank of the United States, flight engineers Anton Shkaplerov. Anatoly Ivanishin and Oleg Kononenko of Russia, Andre Kuiper of Holland and Donald Pettit of the U.S..