I heard about this in school today when my English teacher got a text message from her Boy Friend, who works in mission control. The article is below. Astronauts safe after debris passes space station Crew evacuated to Soyuz lifeboat as a precautionBy MARK CARREAU Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle March 12, 2009, 12:03PM

The three American and Russian astronauts aboard the international space station took shelter in their Soyuz escape capsule briefly today to wait out the close approach of debris from an old U.S. commercial rocket stage, NASA said today.

The debris, about 4 inches long, whizzed within three miles of the orbital outpost at 11:39 a.m., CDT, causing no damage.

However —just in case — Americans Mike Fincke and Sandy Magnus and Russian Yury Lonchakov climbed aboard their Soyuz lifeboat between 11:35 and 11:45 a.m., said NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries.

“We are all very happy the debris did not impact,” NASA’s Mission Control told the astronauts.

The U. S. Strategy Command, the branch of the Department of Defense that tracks the thousands of active and inactive spacecraft and other man-made debris circling Earth, notified Mission Control of the close approach late Wednesday.

The notice left too little time to maneuver the space station well away from the PAM-D rocket upper-stage debris, Humphries said.

The astronauts train for an escape aboard the Soyuz in case of a fire, chemical leak, debris impact or medical emergency.

So far, an evacuation to Earth has not been necessary.

(Copied and pasted from http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6307525.html)