Space junk threatening space station, 3 residents

[Keith Bee]

Source: Huffington Post

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A small piece of space junk is drifting dangerously close to the International Space Station.

NASA has ordered the three station astronauts to seek shelter late Tuesday afternoon in the Russian Soyuz capsule that is docked at the orbiting complex. A NASA spokesman says there's no time to steer the station out of harm's way.

The debris is from a Chinese satellite that was deliberately destroyed in 2007 as part of a weapons test. It's projected to pass within a couple miles of the space station.

It's possible the risk of a collision will diminish. If that happens, the three station residents won't have to close themselves off in the Soyuz spacecraft.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20110405/us-space-station-junk/

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Only three people on the station? Shit, we're going backwards to the Skylab era. :-(

[Freddie Stubbs]

1. This will become an increased problem as low-earth orbit becomes

more and more littered with space junk.

[DeSwiss]

2. We're doing to outer space.....

...what we do here on earth.



- K&R

[snooper2]

4. That picture you found is pretty cartoonish

Last time I checked a satellite wasn't the size of Rhode Island

Try this one :)

[DeSwiss]

5. Yours is much better!

[damntexdem]

3. Hey, if they're not careful, being at the ISS could become almost as dangerous as ...

being in Japan.

[Phoonzang]

6. Way to go China.

Not get up there and clean that shit up.

[Hugabear]

7. Hope your post was sarcasm

We've contributed far more to orbital pollution than China has, for the simple reason that we've done far more space flights than China has. I'd wager to say that between the US and Russia, we're responsible for just about all of it up there.

[sofa king]

9. Right you are.

Note the images of the "debris cloud." Barely 5% of the objects launched into space are operational, and the vast majority of those are American or Russian. Almost all of that junk is coming back down sooner or later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris

[Phoonzang]

11. It was a joke...but since you responded like THAT, I'll note

that it was China that decided to intentionally blow up a satellite a few years ago in a penis-waving show of force and intentionally create more space junk, already knowing that there was a tremendous amount of it in orbit.

[freeplessinseattle]

8. Isn't one of them Gabby Giffords brother-in-law?

Her poor husband, like he hasn't gone through enough already!

[nalnn]

10. 4 miles distant is what I heard

And no time to alter the orbit... 4 miles up there is very dangerous.

A few years back there was an object hurtling on a trajectory that would have brought it within 1/2 mile from the station, but luckily they had time to move the station further away to avoid catastrophe.