Space station astronauts take emergency shelter from hurtling space junk

A piece of space junk forced the three astronauts aboard the International Space Stationto seek emergency shelter Thursday.

For about an hour, the American and two Russians had to hunker down in their Soyuz spacecraft, which is docked to the International Space Station, in case they had to make a quick getaway. The fragment from an old Russian weather satellite ended up passing harmlessly, about 2.4 kilometres away.

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It's only the fourth time in the 16-year history of the space station that a crew has had to rush into a Soyuz for protection from potentially dangerous debris.

Normally, NASA learns about incoming junk sooner, and the space station moves out of the way. But there wasn't time for that Thursday; the crew was notified just 1 hours in advance.

NASA's space stationoperations havehad a number of setbacks recently, with three resupply missions to bring cargo to the orbiting outpost ending in failure within the last year.

The next manned launch to the International Space Station is scheduled for Wednesday, when crew members from the U.S., Russia and Japan are set to blast off in a Russian Soyuz capsule and join three colleagues already in orbit.