Fairly Close Call For ISS

Yesterday afternoon, the crew of ISS retreated into the Soyuz docked at the station as a safety precaution until a piece of space debris flew past. The debris, a piece of a satellite motor, was picked up by NASA the night before, which did not leave enough time to plan a maneuver to push ISS out of possible danger.

None of the crew visually detected the object, which NASA projected could come within 2.4 miles of the station. That is close enough for concern because tracking such pieces of debris lacks precision, and it would be of real concern if talking about a comet approaching Earth, for example, but ISS is finally an extremely small target. Further, it has no gravity field funneling stuff into itself.