Space station's close call with junk: More to come (Update 2)

Space junk threat worried space station (AP)
In this image provided by NASA the international space station is photographed from the space shuttle Endeavour prior to their Nov. 16, 2008 docking. The crew of the international space station survived a close call with space junk Thursday, March 12, 2009. The three crew members took refuge for 11 minutes in the Soyuz escape capsule and then were told to go back into the space station. Officials were worried about a possible collision with a piece of space junk. (AP Photo/NASA)


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 could mean loss of air, loss of pressure and eventual loss of life.


"We were watching it with bated breath," space debris scientist Mark Matney said. "We didn't know what was going to happen."



"We didn't see anything of course. We were wondering how close we were," he radioed Houston.







It was traveling 5.5 miles per second - about 20,000 mph, according to NASA spokesman Josh Byerly.



NASA didn't notify the astronauts until a couple hours after they woke on Thursday because they wanted to try to get more information about the debris, said NASA spokesman Kyle Herring


NASA spokesman Byerly said station crews have used Soyuz as a precaution five times because of debris. But NASA expert Matney said he couldn't it recall ever being used because of space debris.




Smaller space debris often falls into lower orbit and eventually burns up as it returns to Earth. But David Wright, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, "some of the big things will be up there for centuries and those are the ones that can really wreak havoc."




On the Net:

NASA's : http://www.nasa.gov/mission-pages/station/main/index.html

Associated Press Writer Steve Gutterman contributed to this report from Moscow.

Explore further

Space Station Crew Running Low On Food And May Have to Return Home

Citation: Space station's close call with junk: More to come (Update 2) (2009, March 12) retrieved 20 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2009-03-space-station-junk.html

Feedback to editors

User comments

Mar 12, 2009
sorry thats my bad... shouldn't have forgot that motor up there while I was on my way to the moon.

Mar 13, 2009
what i dont get is why we dont just move it into a higher orbit...somewhere right between the earth and moon. that should keep it safe from our immediate vicinity trash.

What you are suggesting would take quite a bit of fuel. The other problem is that if the station were significantly higher than it is now, it would difficult or impossible for the space shuttle to reach it.
