The American space agency NASA has revealed that the International Space Station (ISS) threw a large pile of debris into outer space to help the spacecraft release a little extra weight. According to the ISS daily activity report, the space station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm on March 11 dropped used batteries weighing about 2.6 tons into Earth’s space. According to NASA, the giant lump is moving away from the station safely and will orbit the Earth for the next few years before firing up into the atmosphere.
NASA scientists believe that the debris will eventually be pulled at Earth’s pressure and destroyed before it enters the atmosphere. NASA said the process could take two to four years. The bag released last Thursday contained nickel-hydrogen batteries outside the bag. According to Gizmodo, some people are worried that if the huge debris doesn’t burn up completely in the atmosphere and pieces fall down on Earth. Others worry that the suitcase will be hit by satellites.
‘No threat to satellites’
As per Gizmodo, a NASA official said that there does not appear to be any threat from the suitcase to other satellites in Earth ‘s orbit, adding that the U.S. Space Command will monitor the debris as its everything else in space. The official also said that space debris is the heaviest item ever thrown from the International Space Station in outer space. The official told Gizmodo that the original plan was not to dispose of the batteries, adding that it was thwarted by the launch of the Soyuz rocket back in 2018, which affected walking -space.
“Mission commanders in Houston ordered a Canadarm2 artificial arm to load an outer bag with old nickel-hydrogen batteries into Earth’s orbit Thursday morning. It is safely moving away from the station and will it orbits the Earth for between two and four years before being burned up unharmed in the atmosphere, “NASA said in a statement.
The nickel-hydrogen batteries were used at the International Space Station to store solar energy from the sun. But in 2011, NASA decided to switch from nickel-hydrogen batteries to lithium-ion batteries, which are widely used in new technologies. Earlier this month, ISS astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover, in a historic space mission mission, stopped polluting the nickel-hydrogen batteries to lithium-ion batteries at the space station, which had begun in 2016.