Space Station Residents to Evacuate as Space Junk Threatens.....

Vatic Note: This was updated and the space executives decided not to evacuate the space station after all. However, that still leaves the question of my seeing a meteor during the day time, showing up in our atmosphere with burning tails heading out over the Pacific Ocean. Further there have been reports and problems experienced by Southwest Airlines who says that a hole blown out of the roof of their plane was a result of metal fatigue and given the plane was 15 years old, its possible that was the case, however, they found 80 planes they had to ground,  hmmmm,  more and more coincidences.  One plane with metal fatigue is one thing, but 80 of them?  Its also what you would expect if micrometeors are preceding a heavenly body having come through the Ort Cloud. The debri comes first, then the body that dislodged it.  Start looking up at the sky more often than you have in the past and watch for anomolies and report them to us for our Vatic Watch:    So, it could all be just one big coincidence, but its sufficient for us to begin to keep an eye out for what may potentially be coming and to consider these issues more seriously as more and more "coincidences" develop.  . Here is a note from our contributor.

Contributors Note: Remember the space station crew yesterday had to go to a "protected area" because of "space junk" plus 2 NEAR EARTH ASTEROIDS TODAY?? Well, look at below story from Alex Backman on what happened 4 days ago here in Arizona !!!! Plus, Shuttle going up 5/29/11 to loft 'micro-meteoroid' debris shields to the ISS.... (vn: looks like the station got some consideration. Where is our shield????)   Plus, have you seen my outstanding writeup on Space Rock stuff ?

 Space Station Residents to Evacuate as Space Junk Threatens
http://earthchanges.ning.com/profiles/blogs/space-station-residents-to
Posted by Jason M on April 5, 2011, Source:
Contributed to Vatic Project by Sheldon Day, USA

Jason's comment:  "Space junk" or incoming debris from the the tail of the Destroyer??? Space junk has been floating around for years and now all of a sudden they're worried about it, yeah right.I think when they finally do evacuate the space station, this will be a sign that its about to hit the fan. They want those people up there as long as possible.

Main Article:  
"A small piece of space junk drifting dangerously close to the International Space Station led NASA to warn of a potential need for evacuation early Tuesday -- but the space agency has since sounded the all-clear. Mission Control informed the crew at 2:41 p.m. Tuesday afternoon that the debris no longer posed a threat. (VN:  shortly after the internet spilled the beans on the evacuation.  Funny how that coincidence happened)

"That means we don't get to jump out tonight?" joked Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli. He said he had been looking forward to getting some pizza. "OK, next time," he said.

Eight hours earlier, Mission Control had told the astronauts they might have to leave the space station and seek shelter in their attached capsule, after determining there was not enough time to steer the orbiting outpost away from the space junk. That precaution is no longer needed.

The debris -- about 6 inches (15 centimeter) in size -- is from a Chinese satellite that was deliberately destroyed in 2007 as part of a weapons test. It was projected to pass within three miles (five kilometers) of the space station, warranting a red threat level -- NASA's highest.

That threat level has been lowered from red to green.Just last Friday, the space station had to move out of the way of an orbiting remnant from a two-satellite collision in 2009. Debris is an increasingly serious problem in orbit, because of colliding and destroyed spacecraft. Travelling at 5 miles (8 kilometers) a second, damage can be severe, even from something just inches in size. Decompression, in fact, is at the top of any space farers' danger list.

More than 12,500 pieces of debris are orbiting Earth -- and those are the ones big enough to track.

Mission Control notified the crew of the threat early Tuesday morning, a few hours after the risk was identified. The three crew members are Dmitry Kondratyev, the station's Russian commander, American Catherine Coleman and Italian Paolo Nespoli.

The orbit of the space junk was extremely erratic, and there was quite a bit of atmospheric drag on it, said NASA spokesman Josh Byerly. Experts monitored the debris into the early afternoon, to determine its exact path, and later told the crew that they would not have to close themselves off in the Soyuz spacecraft.

The three station residents arrived in the Soyuz last December. The spacecraft serves as a lifeboat in case of an emergency. It will be used at the end of their six-month mission to deliver the crew back to Earth in May.

If the risk level had remained red, the astronauts would have had to remove ventilation lines running from the space station's major modules, seal the hatches to the rooms, and switch the radio channels so they can remain in contact with flight control teams in Houston and Moscow.

The last time a station crew took refuge in a Soyuz was in 2009. That time, the crew had less than an hour's advance warning. This time, the astronauts had nine hours' notice.

A fresh three-person crew is en route to the 220-mile-high (355-kilometer-high) outpost after rocketing away from Kazakhstan. That Soyuz is due to arrive Wednesday evening.

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