Getting your player ready...
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA gave the all-clear to the international space station Monday, telling its astronauts they wouldn’t need to steer clear of an orbiting piece of satellite junk.
Experts had tracked the debris all day, at one point thinking it might pass within half a mile of the station today, just ahead of the shuttle Discovery’s arrival. A maneuver by the space station would have forced Discovery to adjust its course for docking.
Last week, the three space station residents had to move into their emergency getaway capsule because another piece of space junk came uncomfortably close. LeRoy Cain, chairman of the mission management team, said the back-to-back debris threats were random.
