Author: Kevin Drew
Publisher: New York Times: Space & Cosmos
Published: March 24, 2012
Date Visited: March 26, 2012
Click Here For Original Article
This article was about how the crew aboard the inter national space station had to evacuate due to a piece of space debris passing the international space station. The crew consisted of three russian, two american, and one dutch astronaut. They evacuated in the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Even though a little piece of space debris does not seem like a major issue it can be. Both the space station and the debris were traveling at 17,500 miles per hour, meaning a collision with even a small piece of debris could be extremely dangerous. The reason they evacuated was because NASA was unable to calculate the size of the debris.
I think that this is a larger problem than many people might notice. According to the article over 20,000 objects larger than four inches in Earth's low orbit. Only 1,000 of these are some sort of space craft. To me, this means that the amount of collisions between space crafts and debris will increase, as the amount of debris increases. This also could mean that astronauts in the space stations and in or around spacecrafts in Earth's low orbit have a greater chance of getting hurt. I hope this does not pose to much of a problem, or cause any accidents or unwanted occurrences.
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