According to a Tuesday statement by NASA officials, debris from a defunct Russian satellite zoomed past the International Space Station at 1:19 p. m. EST (1819 GMT) and, at its closest point, was less than one mile of the outpost’s two-man crew!

The debris, which posed a likely threat to the manned platform, was a less-than-four-inch piece of a Russian Cosmos satellite. It was detected far too late by NASA for the space station to make a ‘Debris Avoidance Maneuver’ possible. Typically, whenever there is even a 1-in-10,000 possibility of an object striking the space station, NASA moves the orbiting laboratory.

Due to late detection of the recent debris, NASA instructed the space station’s commander, Jeffrey Williams, and flight engineer, Maxim Suraev, that they might have to get up during their period of sleep and take shelter in their Soyuz spacecraft, which can serve as lifeboats, enabling astronauts to the orbiting laboratory in an emergency.

However, a further analysis of the trajectory of the space trash revealed that, in spite of its rather close pass, the satellite residue did not pose any threat of colliding with the space station.

Once the debris was safely past the space station, NASA spokesperson Kylie Clem said: “Updates showed that it would not come close enough to the space station to require any change in the processes onboard or require precautionary measures.”