SpaceX astronauts had TWO near-misses with ‘space debris’ and they braced for CRASH on way to space station
DRAMATIC footage shows the terrifying moment a 'UFO' narrowly misses the SpaceX rocket on its way to the Space Station - just hours before the astronauts on board were told to brace for a crash in a second near-miss.
The 'space debris' can be seen as it flies past the shuttle just 12 minutes into its mission but six hours later the four astronauts onboard were told to 'buckle up' when a second 'unknown' object hurtled towards them.
"The NASA/SpaceX team was informed of the possible conjunction by US Space Command," spokesman Kelly Humphries said.
"The object being tracked is classified as ‘unknown'.
“The possibility of the conjunction came so close to the closest approach time that there wasn’t time to compute and execute a debris avoidance manoeuvre with confidence, so the SpaceX team elected to have the crew don their pressure suits out of an abundance of caution."
The Endeavour lifted off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Both have been used on previous spaceflights.
The nearly 24-hour ride to the space station, which orbits some 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, had been set to begin on Thursday.
However, the flight was delayed for a day by unfavourable weather forecasts along the rocket's flight path.
The mission marks the second "operational" space station team to be launched by Nasa aboard a Dragon Crew capsule since the United States resumed flying astronauts into space from US soil last year.
Astronauts had flown to orbit onboard Russian rockets during a nine-year hiatus at the end of the US space shuttle program in 2011.
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It is also the third crewed flight launched to orbit under Nasa's fledgling public-private partnership with SpaceX, the rocket company founded and owned by billionaire high-tech entrepreneur
The crew is expected to spend about six months aboard the orbiting research platform conducting science experiments and maintenance before returning to Earth.