AlQa'dah 1, 1432, Sep 29, 2011, SPA -- Astronauts aboard the International Space Station on Thursday were preparing to dodge an approaching piece of space junk, dpa quoted officials at Russia'a national space agency Roskozmos as saying. Remains of a Soviet-era Tsyklon-3 rocket booster were nearing the ISS but there was plenty of time to analyse the fragment's orbit and maneuver the ISS out of the way if necessary, a Roskozmos statement said. The Tsyklon-3 remains were likely to pass closest to the ISS on Thursday evening, the statement said. ISS crew use the engines of a docked spacecraft to manouevre the station out of the path of an approaching object. Three astronauts, two Russians and an American, are currently aboard. Space debris around Earth is a growing problem for satellites and other space vehicles, particularly at altitudes from 750 to 1,500 kilometres. NASA officials have said some 22,000 pieces of space junk are circling the planet, most tiny fragments the size of a sand grain or a fleck of paint, but some weighing hundreds of kilos and moving at thousands of kilometres an hour. The most recent major collision involving space junk took place in 2009, when a deactivated Soviet intelligence satellite struck a recently-launched US commercial communications satellite, destroying both.
