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Astronaut reports UFO, but mystery is quickly solved

La sortie dans l’espace de Luca Parmitano a été interrompue d’urgence ce mardi. Ce membre de l‘équipage de la Station spatiale internationale (ISS) a fait état d’une mystérieuse fuite d’eau dans son casque. Une fuite qui aurait pu s’avérer dangereuse.

While setting up an experiment with three bowling-ball sized satellites called SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites) on Monday morning, American astronaut Chris Cassidy spotted an unusual object flying near the International Space Station.

Reporting the 'UFO' to engineers on the ground, he received a reply quickly enough that put the 'unidentified' part of UFO to rest:

[ More Geekquinox: Rolling fog in Newfoundland looks like giant mountains ]

There is a lot of junk floating around up in orbit. There's even a dedicated office in the European Space Agency to track all of it (or at least as much as possible).

If you want to see a really scary scenario involving space junk that's probably more likely than anyone really wants to admit, check out this trailer for the new movie called Gravity, which comes out in October (not soon enough!):

(Videos courtesy: NASA, Warner Bros)

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