Officials have revealed that the International Space Station came close to being struck by a piece of debris causing the six on board astronauts to hastily prepare for an emergency evacuation.

As the crew members sat in their escape modules the piece of debris came within 336 metres (1,100 feet) of the ISS. It is not known how large the debris was but even a small piece a junk could have caused permanent damage.

It is the closest a debris object has ever come to the station as officials try to work out where it came from. NASA administrator Bill Gerstenmaier said "We don't know what it was. It doesn't have an ID; it's just listed in our tables as 'unknown'".

The vast majority of objects orbiting Earth are junk such as spent rocket capsules, only around 10% are functioning satellites. It is thought there are also millions of small debris fragments in orbit but as a result of the speed they are travelling they can prove to be hazardous.

If the ISS is given enough warning it can move out of the way of passing objects by using its thrusters but in this case the warning was given too late. Mr Gerstenmaier said “today, it takes us a couple of days to actually get the manoeuvre timeline loaded in station and to try to do the manoeuvre to avoid debris. We're working with Russians to make some software changes where we can do that in a much more expedient manner, so if we get late notification of another object - we'll have the ability to move."

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