Something hit the window of the International Space Station – rmf24.pl

A similar view is not pleasant for any driver. Splinter windows, struck a stone from under the wheels of the vehicle before we can seriously disturb us. It is easy to imagine what they feel astronauts and cosmonauts of the International Space Station, who have such a view from a few weeks to one of the windows of the ISS. Likely Following a collision with a cosmic garbage appeared, moreover, in the worst possible location, on one of the glass dome, designed to observe and take pictures.

         

                              stone chip windshield ISS
                                      / ESA / NASA / press materials
                                     

     

dome, built by the European Space Agency (ESA) went to the station in 2010 and since then is, without any exaggeration, the greatest place for viewing on … let’s say, over the Earth. It also has a practical application, enabling better monitoring of the operations performed using automatic arms station.

Multi-layered glass dome are of course suitably resistant, but this time the shrapnel that one of them hit led to a small but visible damage. Splinter of glass is about 7 millimeters in diameter. She photographed him in April British astronaut Tim Peake. ESA estimates that the size of the metal grains may not exceed at this … a few thousandths of a millimeter. Threats to the crew and the equipment was not.

         

                              View of the Earth through the windows of the dome ISS
                                      / NASA / press materials
                                     

     

Center flight control continuously monitors space debris that could become an actual threat for the station and – if necessary – manages shift the station so that down the road space śmieciom. It is estimated that a shard of a diameter of 1 centimeter would have to destroy some instruments outside the station, bigger, could violate the hull modules residential stations and more than 10 centimeters in practice lead to disaster. At the risk you can not afford.

         

                              observation dome, photographed from the window of the Russian ISS module
                                      / NASA / press materials