Discovery dodges junk, teachers set for spacewalk

Confronted with orbiting junk again, NASA ordered the astronauts aboard the linked space station and shuttle Discovery to move out of the way of a piece of debris on Sunday.

Discovery's pilots fired their ship's thrusters to reorient the two spacecraft and thereby avoid a small piece from a 10-year-old satellite rocket motor that was due to pass uncomfortably close during yesterday's planned spacewalk.

Mission Control said keeping the spacecraft in this position for about three hours - with Discovery's belly facing forward - would result in a slow, natural drag of about a foot per second, enough to get the complex out of the way of the 10-cm piece of junk.