In an unusual moment of klutziness, spacewalking astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper let a tool kit slip from her grasp while she was working outside the International Space Station yesterday, and watched helplessly as it drifted away into deep space. “Oh, great,” said a dismayed Stefanyshyn-Piper, a veteran of two spacewalks in 2006, as she watched the bag float away [Florida Today].
The mishap occurred during the first of four spacewalks scheduled to be completed during the visit from the Endeavour space shuttle crew. The tool kit made its escape while Stefanyshyn-Piper and her colleague Steve Bowen were greasing a rotary joint on the station’s giant starboard solar array system. The joint has been unable to automatically point the solar wings toward the Sun for maximum energy production for over a year. Just as she was finishing up the job, the tool bag became untethered from a larger kit case and floated away along with a pair of grease guns, wipes and a putty knife. She reached out, but to no avail [BBC News].
The two spacewalkers were able to finish their task by sharing tools from Bowen’s bag. Mission controllers say the three remaining spacewalks will have to be revamped slightly to adjust for the reduced number of tools now available, but said that the loss posed no major problems. It simply highlights the precision necessary in everything that’s done in space, said one mission controller: “What it boils down to is all it takes is one small mistake for a tether not to be hooked up quite correctly or to slip off, and that’s what happened here,” said lead spacewalk officer John Ray [AP].
Space debris is a growing concern among NASA officials, who track the 8,000 or so pieces of orbiting man-made junk that are larger than 10 centimeters in diameter. The briefcase-sized tool kit is one of the largest objects ever lost during a spacewalk, but officials weren’t worried the bag would hit the space station or the docked space shuttle because by late Tuesday it already was 2 1/2 miles in front of the orbiting complex, said flight director Ginger Kerrick. “It is definitely moving away with every orbit,” Kerrick said [AP].
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Image: NASA TV
November 19th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
To bad about 25,000.00 lost in space in an instant. A pair of space age grease guns, space wipes and a space putty knife totaling approximately 25,000.00. Now if they had regular grease guns to do the same job and just rags for wipes and a regular putty knife, this wouldn’t cost more than 25.00. Any mistakes made in space is gonna be very expensive and congress is watching and taking notes. I think NASA ought to try to cut-out of their expensive space prgram some items where cuts can be administered. I know they train in a swimming pool under water with all of their equipment, but are all of the space tools need to be so expensive? Can’t they use anything here on earth that can be used in space?
November 19th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Yeah, Carl. I agree. Instead of losing 25 grand, you can try to cut down some costs and try using some stuff here from Earth.
November 22nd, 2008 at 6:38 am
Hellooooo, space – vacuum ….. no pressure ….. what works on the planet will not work in space … heloooo
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Carl and Huda are real dingbats. Ignorant morons who think they everything is so simple.
August 31st, 2010 at 5:12 pm
I bet you NASA spent millions on development of a pen that can write in space, with some sort of a solar pump system to keep the ink coming out… and I bet you Russians just used a pencil…
August 31st, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Wait!, nevermind about the price of the tools themselves, what is horribly expensive is to lift them to orbit
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August 19th, 2011 at 6:06 am
DrFruburger, you’d loose that bet. Quit spreading internet myths.