International Space Station and the docked space shuttle Endeavour photographed in May.
Credit: AFP/NASA/File
WASHINGTON: A piece of space debris narrowly missed the International Space Station (ISS) in a rare incident that forced the six-member crew to scramble to their rescue craft, space agency officials said.
The high-speed object hurtled toward the orbiting lab and likely missed by just 250 m. The crew moved to shelter inside two Soyuz spacecraft 18 minutes before it was expected to pass, NASA said.
The size of the space junk remains "undetermined", said NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz, and no harm was done by its fly-by.
Not unheard of
The six astronauts spent about half an hour in the Russian space capsules and then went "back to their regular day" at the space lab, Schierholz said.
The event was unusual but not unheard of. A similar event on March 12, 2009 forced the crew of the space station to seek temporary shelter when a piece of space debris approached.
"We monitor space debris pretty closely so this is not, sort of, out of the realm of what we know can happen," Schierholz said. "But obviously, we are concerned about the safety of the crew so that is why we had them take shelter."
High-speed space junk
Space experts say such events are only becoming more frequent as the amount of waste - from nuts and bolts to rocket parts - is on the rise due to everything from basic wear and tear to controversial military testing.
Millions of chunks of metal, plastic and glass are whirling round Earth, the garbage left from 4,600 launches in 54 years of space exploration.
The collision risk is low, but the junk travels at such high speed that even a tiny shard can cripple a satellite costing tens of millions of dollars. Around 16,000 objects bigger than 10 cm across are tracked by the U.S. Space Surveillance Network, according to NASA.
Extreme but not fatal
The space station has never been hit by major space debris as it orbits some 350 km above Earth, and officials from all nations involved are taking extra precautions to make sure that the orbit being taken up by the ISS remains clean, analysts said.
"The orbit used by the ISS is no longer being littered," Moscow's Space News magazine editor Igor Marinin said. "The incidents we might see in the future could be extreme but they will not be fatal."
The first module of the 16-nation ISS program was launched by Russia in 1998. The station has been built up over the years with the help of the US space shuttle program, which ends later this year after Atlantis's final mission on July 8.
