Florida ? A snagged cable forced Atlantis’ astronauts to resort to a more inconvenient and less comprehensive method of inspecting their space shuttle Saturday as they sped toward a weekend rendezvous with the International Space Station.

Mission Control, meanwhile, decided there was no need to move the space station away from a piece of space junk.

Experts had monitored the orbiting debris for a couple of days, projecting it to pass within six miles of the shuttle and space station shortly after today’s docking. In the end, flight controllers concluded the unidentified object would remain at a safe distance.

This morning’s scheduled linkup remained on track, despite the space junk issue and the condensed safety survey of Atlantis.