Crew Dragon almost collided with an unidentified object

Last weekend, SpaceX and NASA successfully launched four astronauts into orbit aboard the spacecraft Crew Dragon.

The launch went off without a hitch, but the four-person crew really got scared en route to the ISS when they were notified of an unidentified object that might collide.

According to space agency spokeswoman Kelly Humphries, the team was informed of the risk by the US Space Command. At the same time, the ship did not have time to leave the collision trajectory. Instead, the astronauts were only advised to put on airtight spacesuits.

The space command confirmed that NASA was notified by the Pentagon about the risk of a collision approximately 7 hours after the launch of the spacecraft.

Fortunately, further analysis showed that the threat was false. Questions remain open: what kind of object threatened the astronauts? Was it space debris or something else? There are no answers yet. It is only reported that the object was located 45 km from the ship.

Almost seven and a half hours had passed since the launch (it took place at 9:49 GMT or 5:49 local time in Florida, that is, at 12:49 Moscow time), so the astronauts were pretty exhausted. When the crew received the command from SpaceX's mission control center in Hawthorne to prepare for a dangerous rendezvous with space debris, the astronauts were already preparing for bed.

Ground services detected an unidentified object, the trajectory of which was dangerously close to the trajectory of the spacecraft.

However, since the structure of the space debris remained unknown, the ship's crew was ordered to close the visors and seal the spacesuits. Just in case-suddenly there will be smaller fragments nearby, traveling with a large one along the way. By six o'clock in the evening, GMT, the danger was guaranteed to be over and the crew was allowed to return to the normal routine of the mission.