Next month’s shuttle flight to the Hubble Space Telescope faces an increased risk of getting hit by space junk because it will be in a higher, more littered orbit than usual, NASA said Monday.
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New number-crunching puts the odds of a catastrophic strike by orbital debris including bits of space junk at about 1-in-185 during Atlantis’ upcoming mission to Hubble. That compares to 1-in-300 odds for a shuttle flight to the International Space Station, shuttle program director John Shannon said Monday.
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Orbital debris is the newest, biggest threat to an orbiting space shuttle, surpassing even the liftoff dangers of the main engines and booster rockets, and the always-dangerous re-entry, Shannon said.
Space junk a serious problem
Monday, September 8, 2008 around 6 pm mountain
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