Posted on 07/16/2015 7:54:33 PM PDT by BenLurkin
A "close pass" by orbiting junk has forced the International Space Station's crew to scramble into its attached Soyuz capsule. It is the fourth time in ISS's 15 years that a collision risk has prompted such precautions.
Three astronauts briefly fled the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday as a fragment of a former Soviet weather satellite flew by. They sheltered in a Soyuz spacecraft, which normally transports crew members to and from Earth.
A space industry source quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax claimed that US space monitors had spotted the space junk "very late."
That had left the ISS little time to "do an avoidance maneuver," the source said, adding that the likelihood of a collision had exceeded "the acceptable level."
(Excerpt) Read more at dw.com ...
We got a real mess in space with no good way of cleaning it up and just getting worse.
Commence Operation Vacu-Suck.
At 20,000 mph a 1 mm steel ball carries the energy of a .50 cal rifle round.
I saw a good show about the space debris problem on the Science channel last night.
China made a real mess blowing up a satellite a few years back. It alone increased the amount of crap in orbit by 20%.
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