Space station has close call

Space station has close call

www.staugustine.com

WASHINGTON -- The near-hit of space junk Thursday was a warning fired shot across the bow of the international space station, experts said. There's likely more to come in the future.

With less than an hour's notice, the three astronauts were told they'd have to seek shelter in a Russian capsule parked at the space station in case a speeding piece of space junk hit Thursday.

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If it hit and they were in the main part of the station, they'd have only 10 minutes of safety, Mission Control told them. A hole in the space station could mean loss of air, loss of pressure and eventual loss of life.

The crew moved so fast that they may have left their instruction manual on the other side of a closed hatch. Inside the Soyuz, they waited for 10 minutes, ready to flee to Earth if the worst happened. On the ground, space debris experts fretted.

Usually with enough warning, NASA will just move the space station out of harm's way. But NASA didn't learn of the threat until Wednesday night. This piece was in an odd orbit that kept dipping into Earth's atmosphere, making it hard to track, Matney said.

That was really close; It seems the debris missed the ISS; In space size doesn't matter but speed does and this thing was traveling at 5.5 miles per second (about 20,000 mph). Thank god nothing happened to the station; The worst part is, there are 1000s more debris flying out in the space which are not tracked by NASA; this is a serious issue and hope they will not fly in to the danger zone

www.staugustine.com
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Phage was the first to break it, you may enjoy this thread that was started as it happened.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Chadwickus

My bad Chadwickus, I didn't see that thread, thanks for posting the link

[edit on 13-3-2009 by Enceladus]