Space Station Dodges Floating Space Junk

FILE- In this March 19, 1944 photo, members of the Wallenda family practice on a 90 foot high wire at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey's winter headquarters in Sarasota, Fla. On Friday, June 15, 2012, Nik Wallenda, a seventh generation ?Flying Wallenda,? will attempt a high-wire crossing of the Niagra Falls gorge between the United States and Canada. The event will be covered on live television. (AP Photo) / Anonymous

The International Space Station has steered clear of space junk.

Flight controllers fired thrusters on the space station Tuesday morning. That moved the orbiting lab and its crew of six safely away from a chunk of an old NASA research satellite.

The debris originally was projected to come within one-tenth of a mile of the space station. The latest estimate put the close approach at a half-mile. Because of the uncertainty, NASA elected to move the space station.

In a statement, NASA said that there had been a "green" probability of a collision, meaning the debris would have posed no threat. The agency noted that six previous tracking readings had consistently showed a "red" probability and so the astronauts decided o proceed with the maneuver and the burn was executed.

Increasingly, space is being filled up with space junk. NASA estimates there are more than 500,000 pieces of debris in orbit around the Earth, traveling at speeds up to 17,500 mph.

2009 Near Miss in Space

NASA says the space station relocation will have no significant impact on next Monday's launch of the space shuttle Discovery. Discovery launched the atmospheric research satellite in 1991.