The ISS is under constant threat of being destroyed by debris, so when we (eventually) launch astronauts to go to the moon or when we launched like Juno or New Horizons, how did they not get destroyed by the space junk?
In: Engineering
The ISS is not “under constant threat of being destroyed by debris”. There’s always some risk, but it’s not as if the station is always mere moments away from destruction, or anything close to that. First, most debris is too small to do serious damage. We’re talking about grains of dust or flecks of paint. These things hit the ISS and other spacecraft all the time, but they have shielding to protect them. The ISS is also at an altitude where debris will fall back to Earth and burn up pretty quickly, so any debris large enough to pose a risk doesn’t stay around for long. Second, large debris is tracked, so if there is a collision risk, the station’s orbit can be adjusted to avoid it.
Third, you have to understand just how huge space is. Even the space near Earth, which is the most crowded, is just mind-boggling huge, and almost entirely empty. The odds of a spacecraft transiting this space or leaving it to go to another planet being hit by debris large enough to cause serious damage are staggeringly low. No spacecraft has ever been damaged or destroyed doing this.
So, in short, space is really really big and really really empty. There’s always some risk of debris but it’s managed.
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