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On Wednesday, nearly six hours before NASA’s Crew-3 mission launched into orbit, the International Space Station had to maneuver to avoid a piece of debris created by a Chinese. Anti-satellite weapons test in 2007.

The piece of garbage was expected to enter what’s called the “pizza box,” a square-shaped area 2.5 miles deep and 30 miles wide, where the station is in the middle. NASA officials are keeping a close eye on the area using data models of the position of objects in space held by the US Space Command.

Faced with a threat to the region, the agency worked with Russia’s space agency in Moscow to fire thrusters that raised its altitude to just under a mile.

“It makes sense to go ahead and do this incineration and put it behind us to ensure the safety of the crew,” NASA’s space station manager Joel Montalbano told reporters at a news conference on Tuesday.

The debris is the remnant of China’s Fengyun-1C, a weather satellite that was launched in 1999 and decommissioned in 2002 but remains in orbit. In 2007, China targeted the defunct satellite with a ballistic missile, shattering the satellite and creating more than 3,000 debris. The missile test received condemnation from the United States and other countries at the time.

Debris from the satellite was expected to make its close pass from the space station next Thursday night, according to Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who watches objects in space. But now that the station is moving, the danger of collision is very small.

Much of this debris cloud is expected to remain in orbit for decades and threaten the space station and other spacecraft.

The station has performed 29 such evasive maneuvers since 1999, a year after its construction began. In some cases, astronauts board the spaceships and prepare for an emergency takeoff in case the station is hit and damaged.

Only the US, Russia, China and India have launched anti-satellite tests. most recent 2019, when India blew up a defunct satellitean effort to signal the ability to project military power in space.

In April, the SpaceX mission carrying four astronauts to the space station for NASA, Japan and France experienced space debris scares. SpaceX mission control alerted the astronauts that although nothing was approaching, a piece of space debris was reflected by the capsule to buzz, and the crew arrived safely at the space station on April 24.

Days later, the US Space Command determined that the warning was the result of a “reporting error” and that “there was never a threat of collision as there were no objects at risk of colliding with the capsule.” Still, the incident renewed debate about the growing threat of space debris and other clutter in low Earth orbit.