NASA announced the cancellation of a scheduled spacewalk for astronauts aboard the International Space Station out of fear of space debris.
The space agency announced via its Twitter account that the spacewalk was canceled as there was a potential threat of space debris being a danger for astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron. The ISS astronauts were going on a spacewalk to replace a faulty antenna system. NASA has provided updates to its blog post on its website, where it writes that it received a "debris notification" before the spacewalk was meant to take place and decided to postpone the walk until further assessment of the situation has been done.
NASA has provided an update at 6:15 p.m. EST Nov. 30 and wrote, "After receiving additional information about a late notification debris event on Monday, NASA determined the orbit of the debris does not pose a risk to a scheduled spacewalk by Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron or to International Space Station operations. Delaying the spacewalk provided an opportunity for NASA to evaluate the risk from the debris notification. The spacewalk to replace a faulty antenna system on the station's truss structure now is planned for Thursday, Dec. 2."
NASA has made no mention of the origin of space debris, and if they are from the recent anti-satellite weapon test that Russia conducted. The space debris caused by Russia's anti-satellite weapon test forced ISS astronauts to prepare to escape back down to Earth, and the communications of the event can be heard here.
It will be interesting to see space debris that caused the cancellation of the spacewalk event can be traced back to Russia's anti-satellite weapon test.
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