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Spacewalk With a Loss

Even if cosmonauts lost a tool and a washer, they accomplished their mission

Jul 27, 2010 13:37 GMT  ·  By
An unidentified object - potentially a cable attachment fixture - floats away from two Russian cosmonauts conducting a spacewalk July 27 outside the International Space Station
   An unidentified object - potentially a cable attachment fixture - floats away from two Russian cosmonauts conducting a spacewalk July 27 outside the International Space Station

During a routine spacewalk, two Russian cosmonauts lost a tool and a washer to space, outside the International Space Station. Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Mikhail Kornienko spent 6 hours and 42 minutes outside the station, repairing a broken video camera and installing some cables.

Nothing special today on the ISS, except that around 1:45 am EDT, they accidentally lost an unidentified object to space. They were rather confused about the object that had been lost but not very concerned, as one of them realized that it was very likely an unimportant attachment fixture.

The cosmonauts were actually out to the station's Zvezda module, to attach cables up to the station's Rassvet research room. An hour later, another object started floating into space, apparently a washer. Other than the mislaid items, the spacewalk went normally, and the two astronauts were able to accomplish their mission. The spacewalk began at 12:11 am EDT.

These losses are not very serious, as in the Earth's orbit float many pieces of space junk, all of which will be dragged into the atmosphere and burn before reaching the surface. According to space.com, around Earth there are thousands of space debris, from old rockets, inactive satellites and lost tools that escaped astronauts while working in space.

In 2008, a cosmonaut lost a tool bag worth $100,000 , which re-entered the Earth's atmosphere in August 2009 and burned out. A year before, a astronaut threw a coolant tank overboard intentionally, because it was no longer needed and too big to bring back to Earth.

The Space Surveillance Network of the United States Defense Department tracks most of space junk in orbit and alerts NASA when the ISS encounters a potential risk. Then NASA moves the International Space Station and the impact is avoided.

NASA commentator Brandi Dean said that the first tool lost today should not of any threat. “It does seem to have floated below the space station and it should not pose any problem for the space station as far as posing a debris threat.”