6 station astronauts take shelter from space junk

AP - The Monitor ^ | June 28, 2011 | Marcia Dunn A/P

[Liberty Valance]

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The six space station astronauts took shelter in lifeboats Tuesday when a piece of orbiting junk came dangerously close. The unidentified object came within 1,100 feet of the space station — closer than any piece of space junk ever, said NASA's space operations chief, Bill Gerstenmaier. Mission Control ordered the astronauts into the two Russian Soyuz capsules parked at the space station Tuesday morning. NASA got just 14 hours' notice of the close approach, not nearly enough time to move the space station out of harm's way. The call to seek shelter came around 7:30 a.m. EDT. The time of closest approach was a little after 8 a.m. Mission Control gave the all-clear a few minutes later. The two Americans, three Russians and one Japanese floated back into the space station and resumed normal work.

[Liberty Valance]

I do believe McAllen Texas' own Mike Fossum is one of those astronauts.

[Liberty Valance]

*space ping*

[Liberty Valance]

In this image from NASA television the Expedition 28 crew gathers in the Zvezda service module to receive congratulations from family members and officials shortly after the docking of the Soyuz capsule Thursday June 9, 2011. From left front: Flight Engineers Mike Fossum, Sergei Volkov and Satoshi Furukawa; Rear: Flight Engineers Ron Garan, Commander Andrey Borisenko and Flight Engineers Ron Garan and Alexander Samokutyaev.

[BipolarBob]

Why don’t they just get a large trawling net and pick up all that space junk instead of leaving it around to cause havoc?

[WOBBLY BOB]

[Liberty Valance]

There does seem to be a lot of it.

[SERKIT]

The word “junk” has been co-opted by the sexters. How about “orbiting debris”? BTW, this story does not promote Islam, so it does not meet with NASA’s prime mission.

[ArrogantBustard]

Why don’t they just get a large trawling net and pick up all that space junk

p = mv

E_k = mv²/2

[WKUHilltopper]

Taking shelter? What are they doing? Digging foxholes??

[Liberty Valance]

“Mission Control ordered the astronauts into the two Russian Soyuz capsules parked at the space station Tuesday morning.”

[runninglips]

The space station is a large waste of money, with no payoff that I can see. What is the point? Does it serve AMERICAN interests? If not, no more moolah. We can’t afford to borrow money from China for this ugly little “bauble” in orbit.

[WKUHilltopper]

LOL!

[NCC-1701]

Waht if that debris had hit one of the Soyuz spacecraft? Three of the six would be up a creek without a paddle.

[katana]

So, the same reason people don’t try to catch artillery shells in flight with nets, eh? I only got B’s in Physics but retained some of the basic stuff.

[Liberty Valance]

That is true. They are still sitting ducks.

[massgopguy]

A Soyuz capsule is Space Junk. and don’t even think about calling the Enterprise a Garbage Scow.

[ArrogantBustard]

Yep ... and at a much less extreme scale, the same reason this man is wearing some peculiar gear:

[11Bush]

Truck!

[HenpeckedCon]

The Enterprise is not a Garbage Scow. It should be hauled off as garbage!

[CTOCS]

Better yet, why don’t they have a laser-type weapon to blow they debri out of their path? Seems they’ve been at this long enough to develop and deploy one.