The only thing I can come up with would be to use ground based particle beams to knock objects out of orbit. THAT action would solve one problem but cause another with existing ASAT treaty's… But given the high cost a possible collision could incur perhaps space fairing nations need to take another look at those agreements?

For those wondering why the ISS wasn't just moved…
..not enough time to figure out another orbit. Would be pretty silly to move the ISS half-hazardly to another location which would put it in more danger.

is that in km/h?
If so, those 4.5 km translate into a gap of about two thirds of a second wide… if distances can be measured in seconds…. well, you know what I mean, "space junk seconds", conceptually similar to "light years" for measuring distances…

scary thought – no human can see anything that small, travelling at such a speed, coming at them!

How will NASA and other space agencies solve this space debris problem. Its is becoming a bigger and bigger problem.

Do they eventually, it time, enter earth's atmosphere ? Are we producing more space debris that those falling into earth's atmosphere ?

I guess this can only get worst !

Do we REALLY need to have to wait until we see unrecoverable dead cosmonauts or astronauts in orbit before anything is actually done?

1. I didn't think they could track 1 cm objects and the mass doesn't match (wait where/when did the update show up). So I guess I was right about that.

2. It's clear that different organizations have different tolerance with respect to close calls. Obviously you need to be more diligent with lives directly on the line. If I recall, the Cosmos/Iridium mashup was expected to be a close call at about 600m – far less than this one – and far more massive. I also recall that it was reported that that prediction wasn't even in the top 10 for the day. Unless these were misreported or my memory is in error then there is a big disconnect in risk tolerance. A gap that shouldn't be acceptable given that the debris from an unmanned collision could end up being a threat to a manned mission.

The venting could well act as a nozzle, but remember that ISS is a fairly massive object and only one module may depressurize. It might upset solar array and antenna tracking for a time (not a good thing in itself), but it's not enough for any wild gyrations and definitely not sufficent to de-orbit the complex.

As for the idea that you might be 'killed instantly,' that's only if your body happened to be in the path of the penetrating debris. Your more likely problem, not unlike flooding compartments on a ship/submarine, is to get out of, and seal off that section before losing consciousness…

We can take some of the lessons of the Progress/Mir collision as a guide, here.

If the station would be depressurized very fast through a medium-sized hole then a lot of stuff should be blown through the gap, resulting in a new cascade of space debris outside.

Maybe the emersion point itself would operate like a nozzle, giving the ISS some thrust and in consequence disturbing the orientation of the whole complex, making the station gyrate or even leave the orbit?

More seriously, hasn't this already happened before?

Once you realize that, just picture *anything* 1 cm in size traveling at that speed hitting you. You'd never realize you'd been hit, because you'd be dead, instantly.