According to the article the station was in danger of a potentially catastrophic collision with a 5 inch piece of space junk from a rocket that launched a satellite in 1993. While the piece missed the station, they don't know by how far. There are 10s of thousands of pieces of junk up there. Most of it apparently in high orbits, but enough in the lower orbits that they expect this will be an issue again. The residents of the space station took refuge in the Soyuz capsule prepared to abandon the station if necessary. Time for a cosmic janitor launch?

Tags: space station, space, nasa,

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