The crew of the International Space Station spent this morning taking cover in a Soyuz capsule, ready to evacuate in the event of a collision with fast-moving space debris spotted by a tracking system.

According to NASASpaceflight.com, a collision with the object was originally considered to be low risk, but a fresh set of calculations put the astronauts on red alert shortly before it passed them by.

Nancy Atkinson, a Writer for Universe Today, covered the tense evacuation from her twitter feed, "Some people are tracking debris on Google Earth, say it looks like a piece of Iridium satellite."

Last month, two satellites collided in orbit, giving the world a wake-up call that space is becoming crowded with man-made objects. In the summer before that accident, the International Space University released a report calling for better traffic control in space.

In the last decade, the ISS has had to make eight "collision avoidance maneuvers" to avoid being hit by large debris, according to a NASA paper on the space station and the orbital debris environment.

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*Image: NASA

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