A piece of debris orbiting Earth at high speed forced the crew of the international space station to take shelter in its escape capsule on Thursday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said. The object—about the size of a bullet and moving 20 times as fast—passed within 4.5 kilometers of the orbiting platform late Thursday afternoon GMT, NASA said. The debris forced the three-member crew into the Soyuz return ship for about 10 minutes. The 9-millimeter piece of metal came from a satellite rocket motor that had been used on an earlier space mission, NASA said. The North American Aerospace Defense Command warned NASA mission controllers about the object Wednesday night, which was too late for the space station to make an evasive maneuver, NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries told CNN. After the precaution of waiting in the escape capsule, the three astronauts were “getting back out of the Soyuz and reactivating all the station systems to they can get back to normal duties,” Humphries said. The space station has had to avoid a possible collision eight times in the eight years it has been occupied, Humphries said, but “this is the first time we've had to shelter in a Soyuz.”
