A swarm of satellites nearly missed the space junk after European Space Agency officials had hours to perform an emergency maneuver.
The ESA planned and executed the dodge in just four hours after the satellite swarm suddenly moved on a crash course to avoid sun damage.
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The European Space Agency’s Swarm mission consists of three spacecraft orbiting the Earth to study the planet’s magnetic field.
ESA officials said they often had to adjust the satellite swarm’s course, but thanks to the sun, the situation has become a bit trickier.
“The sun has entered the active part of its 11-year cycle, during which increasingly powerful solar flares can bombard Earth’s upper atmosphere,” he says. Forbes reported.
“This increases the density where the satellites orbit, causing them to slow down, burn more fuel and threaten to drag them back to the surface.”
This caused Swarm to move into higher orbits to avoid the pull when the ESA detected a space junk threat on June 30.
While changing the swarm’s course is not a problem under normal circumstances, officials were warned that the swarm mission could come to a halt in just eight hours.
This is a very short time to plan a maneuver.
“Such a move usually requires a lot of control to make sure the change doesn’t endanger the risk of other collisions and also to figure out how to get back to the original path it should go on once the threat is over.” Forbes reported.
However, the European Space Agency saved the day in just four short hours.
After dodging the space junk, they got Swarm back on track a day after the near miss.
This comes as a huge asteroid the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza will skim past the Earth on July 17.