Space Station May Dodge Satellite Debris

March 16, 2009 8:22 p.m. EST

Houston, TX (AHN) - NASA engineers on Monday are figuring out if the International Space Station (ISS) should maneuver to avoid getting hit by a debris or piece of a Soviet Union-era satellite.

The piece of the Russian Kosmos 1275 will pass about half a mile from the space station at 2:14 a.m. CDT (7:14 a.m. GMT) Tuesday, said Bill Jeffs, a spokesman at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, according to CNN.

The space station can move away from the path of the debris by firing rockets, Jeffs said.

If the maneuver is done, the space shuttle Discovery will have to adjust the time it will dock with the space station by seconds or minutes, LeRoy Cain, the shuttle program's deputy manager, told CNN. The Discovery with seven astronauts is en route to the space station and is scheduled to dock Tuesday.

Last week, a space debris threatened to hit the orbiting platform forcing three crew, two Americans and a Russian, to prepare for an evacuation by moving to an escape capsule. The 5-inch metal from a satellite rocket motor moving at 20,000 mph passed within three miles of the ISS early Thursday.