WASHINGTON – A fragment of space junk, just a third of an inch wide, threatened to collide on Thursday with the international space station, briefly forcing three astronauts to leave the station and take refuge in an attached Russian spacecraft that serves as an emergency lifeboat.
The debris missed, and the astronauts quickly returned to the station after just 11 minutes aboard the Soyuz spacecraft. But the unusual event offered a reminder that astronauts and spacecraft are increasingly playing a deadly game of space-debris dodgeball in orbit.
Nasa was notified late on Wednesday that the object, a piece of a motor used to launch a satellite, would pass about three miles from the space station. But orbital trajectories are imprecise, and this rated as a close call, or “conjunction”.
Typically when there is a possible collision with space junk, the flight team at Nasa will manoeuvre the space station, steering it out of harm’s way. But the notification from the military about this particular object came too late to execute an avoidance maneuvre.
Space debris drew headlines last month when two satellites collided 491 miles above the earth, the first collision of two intact satellites. – (LA Times-Washington Post service)