According to NASA records, the Space Station had to fire it's engines to avoid space debris eight times in the past. The most recent dodging of space junk was last August. Yet again, NASA may find it necessary to dodge another hunk of left over Russian Satellite metal. Just last week, the Space Station was almost struck by an orbiting piece of metal. But fortunately, the debris left over from 1981 just missed the space station by a 1/2 mile.

There is a scheduled shuttle docking that is to take place tomorrow (Tuesday), but if the Space Station has to fire it's engines to dodge space junk, the shuttle will have to adjust it's position for docking.

NASA spokesman Bill Jeffs says The debris is from a satellite called Kosmos 1275, but he is unsure the size of the debris.

Kosmos 1275 broke up somewhat mysteriously, said NASA orbital debris scientist Mark Matney. It may have crashed with another object that wasn't tracked and it made a cloud of 310 pieces of debris that are slowly falling into a lower orbit, he said.

For more information see http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090316/ap_on_sc/space_shuttle