Source: Xinhua

03-13-2009 10:18

MOSCOW, March 12 (Xinhua) -- The crew of the International Space Station (ISS) evacuated to a Russian spacecraft on Thursday when a piece of space debris passed by, the Mission Control Center outside Moscow said.

International Space Station (ISS) Commander Mike Fincke (L) and Flight Engineer Yury Lonchakov work outside the Russian segment of the station during their spacewalk from the orbiting laboratory in this March 10, 2009 image from NASA TV. Dressed in Russian spacesuits, Fincke and Lonchakov floated outside the orbiting outpost for six hours of work, including setting up a European materials science experiment, before the shuttle Discovery's scheduled arrival on Friday. (Xinhua/Reuters, File Photo)

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"The cosmonauts entered the spacecraft at 7:35 p.m. Moscow time (1635 GMT) and stayed there for 10 minutes while the station was in dangerous proximity to a piece of space debris," Valery Lyndin, spokesman for the flight control center, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

The astronauts returned to the ISS later and resumed work, Lyndin said.

The U.S. monitoring service spotted the debris too late for the ISS to avert a possible collision, so the Russian Mission Control instructed the crew to take refuge in the Soyuz space capsule, he said.

Last month, a defunct Russian satellite collided with a privately owned U.S. communications satellite in space, shooting out a pair of massive debris clouds. NASA believed that the risk caused by the collision to other spacecrafts is low.

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Editor:Yang Jie