Source: Xinhua
03-17-2009 15:17
Special Report: Tech MaxBEIJING, March 17 (Xinhuanet) -- NASA gave the all-clear to the international space station Monday, assuring its astronauts that they would not need to steer away from an orbiting satellite debris, media reported Tuesday.
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| Space shuttle Discovery astronauts (L-R) Koichi Wakata of Japan, John Phillips, Richard Arnold, Steve Swanson, Joseph Acaba, Pilot Tony Antonelli and Mission Commander Lee Archambault leave their crew quarters for launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida March 15, 2009. (Xinhua Photo) |
Experts had been keeping close tabs on the debris all day, and ascertained that the shuttle Discovery would remain at a safe distance from a debris of a Soviet Union-era satellite.
"We will not need to perform the debris avoidance manoeuvre," U.S. mission control in Houston told the seven-member crew on board the space shuttle Discovery.
The piece of the Kosmos 1275 will pass about half a mile from the space station at 2:14 a.m. CDT (7:14 a.m. GMT) Tuesday, said Bill Jeffs, a spokesman at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The Discovery with seven astronauts was en route to the space station and scheduled to dock Tuesday. A maneuver by the space station would have forced Discovery to adjust its docking time by seconds or minutes, according to LeRoy Cain, the shuttle program's deputy manager.
Kosmos 1275 satellite was disintegrated shortly after it was launched in 1981.
On Thursday, another space debris, which came uncomfortably close at 220 miles (some 352 km) above Earth, forced three crew -- two Americans and a Russian, to prepare for an evacuation by moving to an escape capsule.
Apart from it, a two-satellite wreck in a much higher orbit last month also spotlighted the growing problem of space junk.
"We seem to have a bit more than we've had in the past," Flight director Paul Dye said Monday evening.
"It's a little bit like traffic on the freeway. Sometimes it's bad and sometimes it's not, and sometimes you can figure out why and sometimes you're not sure where it came from."
NASA has moved the space station to dodge debris eight times, most recently in August.
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Editor:Yang Jie
