Here comes more space debris. NASA has been alerted that a piece of a Chinese rocket could pass close by the joined space shuttle Discovery and International Space Station on Monday afternoon.
As a precaution, Discovery commander Lee Archambault will fire shuttle thrusters around 4:30 p.m. EDT to adjust the position o the two spacecraft, in preparation for a possible avoidance maneuver.
The new position will create drag that slightly lowers their orbit. After holding that position for a few hours, NASA will decide if whether a bigger adjustment is necessary.
"Hopefully that will be enough that we won't have to do anything else," said Bill Jeffs, a spokesman at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The debris - measuring about four inches in diameter - is a piece of a Chinese rocket that launched in 1999 and broke up in 2000, Jeffs said.
U.S. Strategic Command, which monitors such debris, alerted NASA of its approach.
It was not clear if the debris could disrupt Monday's planned spacewalk, but presumably an avoidance maneuver, if necessary, would place spacewalkers out of harm's way.
NASA considered moving the station the day after Discovery's March 15 launch from Kennedy Space Center because of another piece of space junk. Continued tracking determined that the debris wouldn't come as close as initially thought, and no maneuver was necessary.
In February, the space station's three-person crew had to briefly take shelter in their Soyuz escape craft after a late alert about approaching debris. It passed without incident.
Space debris "comes with the territory," said LeRoy Cain, deputy shuttle program manager, after the shuttle's launch.
In other activity, station commander Mike Fincke will resume efforts that stalled earlier today to activate a urine processor.
IMAGE NOTE: Click to enlarge the computer-generated artist's rendering of the International Space Station as of March 15, 2009. The Starboard 6 integrated truss segment installation and solar array deployment are complete. The Progress 32 resupply vehicle remains docked to the Pirs Docking Compartment and Soyuz 17 (TMA-13) remains linked to the Zarya nadir port.
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Orbiting Earth at this very moment are thousands of chunks of space junk that pose a threat to satellites and spacecraft alike.To monitor this debris Japan is planning to launch a military space air force by 2019 that will be going to protecting the satellites.It is going to led many companies and agencies to draw up plans to reduce the amount of space debris in Earth orbit.
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