ISS Crew Dodges Space Debris

Russian Mission Control says the International Space Station's crew has briefly taken seats in escape capsules due to a close encounter with space debris. The six crewmen spent about half an hour today in two Soyuz escape capsules docked at the station before the space junk passed by without jeopardizing the station, a Mission Control spokesman said.

The station periodically faces close encounters with debris, and engineers normally adjust the station's orbit to reduce the probability of impact. If monitors fail to spot the space junk in time to perform the maneuver, the crew is ordered to board the capsules. The station is manned by Americans Michael Fossum and Ronald Garan Jr., Russians Sergey Volkov, Andrei Borisenko and Alexander Samokutayev and Japanese citizen Satoshi Furukawa. (Click to read more about the International Space Station's current crew.)