A grapefruit-sized space debris orbiting at 21,000 miles per hour missed hitting the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday and aborted an evacuation by its three astronauts, the U.S. space agency said.

The object measuring five inches in diameter is part of an old rocket motor of a U.S. Navy global positioning system satellite and was detected by the space junk-tracking U.S. Strategic Command (STATCOM) late Wednesday.

NASA's groundbreaking attempt to map carbon dioxide levels around the world ended with the failed launch of its monitoring satellite.

It it had been successfully launched, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite would have monitored greenhouse gases to see how they affect the world's climate.

A U.S. mobile communications satellite has collided with a non-operational Russian communications relay station creating a cloud of orbiting debris, according to the U.S. space agency NASA.

One of nearly 100 satellites that support Iridium Satellite LLC's satellite telephone operation collided Tuesday with the Cosmos 2251 491 miles above northern Siberia, said Nicholas Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, according to CBS News. The cause of the collision, the first by two big objects, was unknown, according to Johnson.

Google Inc. on Monday unveiled an upgraded version of the popular and free online geographical and space exploration tool Google Earth.

The search engine giant, together with former Vice President Al Gore, singer Jimmy Buffet and others, launched Google Earth 5.0 at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

A nine-year-old girl, who went missing as she was allegedly abducted by her grandmother, was tracked down by police using Google's Street View on the internet and a mobile phone signal.

Natalie Maltais went missing on Saturday after her grandmother Rose M. Maltais, 52, did not return with her following a weekend away, the officials based in Athol, Massachusetts said.