14 DAY TRIAL // Experts at Mission Control in Houston said recently that the International Space Station (ISS) was not forced to deviate from its orbit on Saturday, as initially feared. Scientists tracking pieces of space debris around the station, as well as their chances of impacting the football field-sized laboratory, had determined previously that the pieces of space junk would pass very close to the orbital facility and its astronauts. Mission controllers were therefore ready to give the order to move the ISS out of its stable orbit.
Throughout Friday, experts in Houston kept an eye on the space junk, and eventually decided that the threat it posed was lower than previously established. The piece of space debris flew closest to the station and its crew on Saturday, at 6:05 pm EST (2305 GMT). According to the latest measurements, the object passed more than five and a half miles (or nine kilometers) away from the ISS, which in the end turned out to be about two times further away than the first observations proposed.
The trash came from a spent Delta 2 rocket, which was used to deliver the Wild 2 NASA mission to orbit more than ten years ago. The goal of that mission was to launch the Stardust sample-return component to the comet, study it, and then return grains of sand from its surface back to Earth. This was proven to be possible in 2006, when the instrument parachuted back to our planet's surface, carrying with it the samples. Stardust-NExT, the carrier spaceship that delivered Stardust to orbit, is currently heading for a February 2011 rendezvous date with the comet Tempel 1.
NASA announces that this is not the first piece of space junk to make its way close to the space station. Another one is scheduled to pass close to the facility on Monday, November 30th. But experts at the space agency believe that the new piece of space junk will be harmless, considering that it's estimated to pass more than e 8.6 miles (14 kilometers) away. This is considered to be a comfortable distance, experts say, as it will most certainly put the ISS out of harm's way, Space reports.
Experts in charge of managing how the space station moves in orbit said that moving the spacecraft would have had an impact on the arrival and departure schedule of planned Soyuz space-capsule flights. “We have to be careful how we go about maneuvering the space station. We have to balance the landing, the other Soyuz launch and then make sure we've tweaked it enough that we miss the object,” Bill Gerstenmaier, who is the chief of NASA space operations, explained.