A piece of space debris missed the International Space Station by only 750 meters today (June 28, 2011). The debris was traveling thousands of miles an hour. The crew had to scramble to get into their rescue craft where they remained till it passed.
Space debris, or space junk, is becoming a big problem. There is so much of this junk orbiting the earth that it is amazing the International Space Station has not been hit already. There have been several other near misses in the past.
Even though this is a big problem, the government has yet to take it seriously. Case-in-point: The Allen Telescope Array has been proven to be a great tracker of space debris, but the government can not seem to find the $2.5M/year that it takes to run the Allen Telescope Array. You can see the program announcement here: http://www.seti.org/afspc, but the Allen Telescope Array ran out of operational funding and had to go into hibernation till the United States Air Force Space Command can release the funding. This is sad and shortsighted.
Space debris has the potential of disturbing all satellites and global communications.
A great article with more details is at Yahoo News.
Photo courtesy of NASA.
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