MOSCOW Russia's Mission Control Center said Wednesday it dropped an earlier plan to move the International Space Station into a different orbit to avoid possible collision with space debris after additional calculations showed that there was no such threat. <\/p>\n
Mission Control Center said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that a fragment of space debris would fly by too far to pose any danger to the space outpost, so a plan to fire booster rockets to carry out the maneuver on Thursday at 07:22 a.m. Moscow time (0322 GMT) was canceled. <\/p>\n
The space station performs evasive maneuvers when the likelihood of a collision exceeds one in 10,000. <\/p>\n
NASA estimates that more than 21,000 fragments of orbital debris larger than 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) are stuck in earth's orbit, and experts worry that orbiting junk is becoming a growing problem for the space industry. <\/p>\n
There are six astronauts -- three Russians, two Americans and one from Japan -- onboard the orbiting laboratory. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
See the original post here: MOSCOW Russia's Mission Control Center said Wednesday it dropped an earlier plan to move the International Space Station into a different orbit to avoid possible collision with space debris after additional calculations showed that there was no such threat. Mission Control Center said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that a fragment of space debris would fly by too far to pose any danger to the space outpost, so a plan to fire booster rockets to carry out the maneuver on Thursday at 07:22 a.m. Continue reading
\nInternational Space Station safe from orbiting space debris<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"