WASHINGTON - The crew of the International Space Station had a close call with space junk Thursday, NASA officials said.
The three astronauts briefly took refuge inside a Russian escape capsule before returning inside the space station.
Officials ordered them into the capsule because they were worried that the orbiting outpost might get hit by a piece of passing space junk.
"We've cleared," station commander Mike Fincke radioed to Mission Control in Houston as he prepared to go back inside.
The debris, which measured just under a centimetre, was part of a motor that helped boost a satellite into proper orbit, said NASA spokesman Kyle Herring.
Tiny pieces of debris could cause a fatal loss of air pressure in the station, officials said.
NASA usually tries to move the space station out of the way of space junk, but they got this warning Wednesday night when it was too late to move the station, Herring said.
Instead, NASA sent the crew to the Soyuz capsule, an option that has been used in the past, Herring said. A Soyuz capsule is parked at the space station to serve as a lifeboat if needed for the station's residents.
The piece of debris was expected to come within the 4.5-kilometre box of space around the station that makes up NASA's danger zone, Herring said.
"We were looking out the Soyuz window," Fincke radioed to Houston. "We didn't see anything of course. We were wondering how close we were."
Fincke is one of two Americans living aboard the space station; the third resident is Russian.
