Debris no danger to space station and its crew members

A piece of space debris approached dangerously the International Space Station but NASA assures that the junk will not get closer than 1 kilometer from the station. The two crew members - an astronaut and a cosmonaut - were initially awaken by the Mission Control in order to take refuge on the ISS-attached Soyuz spacecraft in case of emergency. Following the evaluation of the situation, the experts considered that it was too late to make any kind of maneuver away from the debris. Jeff Williams and Maxim Suraev, the two present inhabitants of the ISS will be replaced on 23 December 2009 by Oleg Kotov (Russia), Soichi Noguchi (Japan) and T.J. Creamer (NASA).