Slippery Space

November 18, 2008

Two of the shuttle Endeavour astronauts are working outside the International Space Station today, in the first of four spacewalks planned for the mission.
Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Stephen Bowen got off to an early start, slipping through hatch of the station’s Quest airlock more than 30 minutes ahead of schedule.

They hustled through a few early tasks to pack up an empty nitrogen tank for transport back to Earth and remove an insulation blanket from a window in Japan’s Kibo module before moving on to the primary goal of their spacewalk: cleaning up a contaminated rotary joint in the station’s truss. The joint is needed to position solar wing panels toward the sun so they can collect as much light as possible to produce electricity.

Things started to unravel when Stefanyshyn-Piper gathered her tools for the job. She found one of her grease guns had lost its cap and had leaked grease inside its bag. When she reached inside, the grease got all over her gloves.

"I think we had a grease gun explode in the large bag," she told flight controllers at NASA’s Mission Control Cener in Houston. “There's grease in the bag."
She tried cleaning off the goop with a dry wipe -- without much luck. Then her tool bag floated away.

“Oh, great!” said Stefanyshyn-Piper, a veteran of two previous spacewalks. “I guess one of my … bags was not tethered and it’s loose … See it?"

“Yeah, we see it," replied astronaut Shane Kimbrough, who was overseeing the spacewalk from aboard Endeavour.

Television cameras showed the bag floating off into space. In addition to the leaky grease gun, the bag held a second grease gun, scrapers, wipes, trash bags and other equipment needed to clean and lubricate the rotary joint.

All was not lost, however. A duplicate set of gear was stashed inside her partner’s tool bag.

Three more spacewalks are planned during Endeavour’s flight to work on the rotary joint.

(Credit: NASA TV)

Comments

[Old Bob]

I'd just like to ask if any shade tree mechanics out there have never knocked over a tool box? Yours' probably fell 5 feet or so, the only difference is Heide's fell 212 miles.

...stuff happens.

[sohbet]

Yours' probably fell 5 feet or so, the only difference is Heide's fell 212 miles.

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