Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) had Thursday shelter from flying space debris.
Three astronauts onboard the ISS yesterday morning were instructed to take shelter in the Soyuz escape capsule. There was, according to a NASA Mission Control in Houston slight chance that could get a piece of a Russian weather satellite ISS.
After the space debris had passed without collision the space station, the astronauts were allowed to leave the escape capsules. Scott Kelly, one of the two flight engineers, tweeted: “Fortunately there was no collision Great coordination between international teams good training ground…” It was the fourth time in the history of the ISS astronauts had to take shelter for flying space debris.
Half a million pieces of space debris
There were some 500,000 pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth fly. Some pieces are just a few centimenter great but the pieces fly at a speed of more than 28,000 km / h around spacecraft and satellites can severely damage or completely destroy.
On February 10, 2009 collided with an operational Iridium 33 satellite at a speed of 42,000 km / h with a discarded Kosmos 2251 satellite. The two satellites explode in more than 2,000 large pieces of debris. Space has long been looking for a realistic solution to clean up space debris.
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