ISS - keeping watch for space junk

There is a lot of junk in the Earths orbit, mostly we put it there! The problem is that there is so much of it, and its hard to track it all. Moving at high speeds small pieces of metal (and one tool box) can do a lot of damage to  satellite or to the International Space Station.

The alarm was raised when a 5cm long piece of debris was found that was likely to pass within .5km of the station.   There are options for the astronauts including evacuation to the docked Soyuz capsules. Its unlikely to come to that, but it raises the issue of what are we going to do about the junk? There have been suggestions to clean it up, but like most things, money is the problem.  Until then expect further news items about close encounters in orbit.

Junk in Orbit