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NASA astronauts Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron were supposed to exit the International Space Station (ISS) today to replace a faulty antenna system. But this jaunt into space had to be postponed because of space debris.
“NASA received a debris notification for the space station. Due to the lack of opportunity to properly assess the risk it could pose to the astronauts, teams have decided to delay the Nov. 30 spacewalk until more information is available,” the space agency said in a statement.
It is unclear at this point the level of threat to the astronauts or when the spacewalk will actually take place. It is also unclear where the debris has come from.
There is a lot of space junk in Earth's orbit, from the 60 odd years of space exploration, so it could be many things. But several people are linking this debris with that caused by Russia blowing up one of its satellites just two weeks ago.
The astronauts and cosmonauts in the ISS had to take shelter due to the potential for the fragments of the test to damage the ISS.
