The Expedition 27 crew members aboard the International Space Station did not need to take shelter in their Soyuz spacecraft when a piece of debris from a Chinese satellite made its closest pass at 22:21CEST Tuesday, at least 6 kms from the station.

The ISS Mission Control Center Houston (MCC-H) gave the crew the all-clear at 20:41CEST as the space station orbited above eastern Asia. Flight controllers had been monitoring the debris from the Chinese FENGYUN 1C satellite since early Tuesday morning. Because there was not enough time to steer the station out of the way, as was done Friday for a different piece of debris, the crew would have been asked to shelter inside the Soyuz TMA-20 that brought them up to the station in December had it become necessary.

Listen to mission control give the all-clear here:

More information from NASA on how the International Space Station team tracks and responds to threats here.

via NASA