Astronauts scramble for escape pods as space junk threat gets serious

Some 22,000 chunks of space junk zip around the earth. On Saturday, six International Space Station astronauts scrambled for safety as a piece of a Russian satellite whizzed by.

|
NASA/AP
The International Space Station as it orbits the Earth. A discarded chunk of a Russian rocket forced six space station astronauts to seek shelter in escape capsules early Saturday.

The six earthlings – three Russians, two Americans, and a Dutchman – aboard the International Space Station were stirred from their slumber Saturday morning to jump into emergency escape pods, once again drawing into focus the growing dangers of hurtling space junk.

The astronauts, orbiting 200 miles above the planet, were told by ground control to scramble into two docked Soyuz spacecrafts in case a piece of a wrecked Russian satellite should smash into the ISS, which could have heavily damaged the platform as both objects were traveling at orbital speeds – 17,500 miles per hour. The emergency was called off after the chunk passed by at an approximate distance of nine miles – which in space terms is a near-miss.

"Everything went by the book and as expected, the small piece of cosmos satellite debris passed the international space station without incident,” said a NASA spokesman.

RECOMMENDED: Are you scientifically literate? Take the quiz

Ground controllers did not believe the ISS was in extreme danger, but ordered the emergency maneuver after determining that the trajectories could intersect.

NASA says there are about 22,000 pieces of sizable space junk – primarily bits of old satellites – orbiting the earth and has in the past ordered the ISS crew to adjust the craft's path to avoid collisions. In all, NASA tracks nearly half a million pieces of space junk.

The piece that threatened the ISS Saturday morning came from the 2009 collision of the Iridium communications satellite and the Russian Cosmos 2251.

NASA spotted the latest threat too late for the crew to move the ISS safely out of the way. It was the third time in 12 years that astronauts were ordered to scramble for safety. Last June, a piece of debris came within 1,100 feet of the craft.

NASA said it followed a “precautionary and conservative” approach by ordering the astronauts to enter the escape pods. The astronauts – Russians Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin, and Oleg Kononenko, Americans Dan Pettit and Dan Burbank, and Dutchman Andre Kuipers – were awakened about an hour early on what was to have been their day off to get into the Soyuz' crafts and close the hatches.

The spacefarers watched through the portholes to see if they could catch a glimpse of the zooming debris. "Nichevo ... Nothing," one of the Russian cosmonauts said.

If the 450-ton ISS had been hit and disabled, the astronauts were prepared to detach and descend back to earth in the capsules. Instead, they climbed back into the ISS and “resumed a normal and relaxing weekend,” NASA spokesman Rob Navias told MSNBC.

In response to concerns from the National Research Council that space junk is posing an increased threat to the earth's critical satellite network and the ISS, spacefaring nations have signed compacts to adopt best practices to better control expired space craft and their inevitable return to earth. About one large piece of space junk falls to earth each year. Just this week, villagers in Siberia reported a large “UFO fragment” falling to earth, even as space experts struggled to confirm its origin.

Researchers are also working on ways to corral space junk while in orbit. One idea, in theory, resembles a sort of space shrimp boat that would use a net to trawl for debris. Other ideas include using lasers to obliterate the pieces, and a Swiss company last month said they are developing a sort of “janitor satellite” to clean up the trash strewn skies.

RECOMMENDED: Are you scientifically literate? Take the quiz

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Astronauts scramble for escape pods as space junk threat gets serious
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2012/0324/Astronauts-scramble-for-escape-pods-as-space-junk-threat-gets-serious
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe