This story was updated at 8:00 p.m. EST.
NASA
astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper is lamenting the lost tool bag that escaped her
grip during a Tuesday spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
Stefanyshyn-Piper
was mopping up a mess from leaky grease gun when the small bag came loose and drifted
beyond her reach with its load of vital tools.
"Well it
was definitely not the high point of the [spacewalk]," Stefanyshyn-Piper said
of the mistake during a series of televised interviews on Wednesday. "That
was definitely disheartening to see that float away."
Stefanyshyn-Piper
was working outside the space station Tuesday with crewmate Steve Bowen on the
first of four spacewalks to clean grit out of a damaged solar gear and add
lubrication in a bid to restore its health. The gear is used to turn the space
station's starboard solar arrays like a paddlewheel so they always face the
sun.
It was
while preparing for that greasy job that Stefanyshyn-Piper, a veteran
spacewalker leading the shuttle Endeavour crew's four excursions, opened her
tool bag and found it full of sticky gray grease.
"It was almost
as disheartening to open up the bag and realize there was just grease everywhere.
Well not everywhere, but....everywhere," she said of the grease. "It was just a
continuous ooze."
The grease,
Stefanyshyn-Piper described, filled the bag with thick, goupy pieces that stuck
to tools and her own spacesuit. And while she was using wipes to clean up the
mess, the 30-pound (13-kg) bag popped loose and started floating away. The spacewalkers
and Mission Control believe it may not have been secured properly from the
start.
"There was
that split second thinking that, maybe I can go jump for it and grab it. Then I
realized that it would just make everything worse and then we'd have two
floating objects, one of which would be me," said Stefanyshyn-Piper. "So the
best thing to do was just to let it go."
Moving past
the misstep during the spacewalk was easy, since there were still more than five
hours of tricky gear clean up work ahead, the spacewalker said.
"There's
still the psychological thing of knowing that we made a mistake," she added. "It
was harder coming back in and having to face everybody else."
Space
station flight director Ginger Kerrick said late Wednesday that the lost tool
bag was currently below and behind the International Space Station. Because of
its low velocity, it's expected to hang around for a bit before its orbit
decays further, but does not pose a risk to the station or Endeavour, she
added.
Endeavour astronauts
and spacewalk planners have come up with an idea to make up for the lost tool
bag by preparing terry cloth-like wipes so spacewalkers won't get bogged down
by sharing the remaining grease guns during the next few spacewalks, Kerrick
said.
But
Stefanyshyn-Piper assured that the mistake is one her spacewalking crew will not
make again. There are still three more spacewalks ahead for Endeavour's crew in
order to completely clean the solar array gear. In between the excursions, the
astronauts are hard at work adding a new bathroom, kitchen, two bedrooms, gym
equipment and a water recycling system that turns urine
into drinking water to the station.
"We're definitely
not going to do it again," Stefanyshyn-Piper said. "You're not going to see us
lose another bag."
Bowen said
the lost bag is not weighing solely on Stefanyshyn-Piper's mind. It was he,
after all, who prepared and cleared the bag for use before the spacewalk.
"It was as
much my mistake as anyone else's," Bowen said, adding that there's been some
good-natured ribbing among Endeavour's crew to ease tension. "There's been some
teasing just to make you feel better. But it's sort of like a family in that
respect."
The next
spacewalk for Stefanyshyn-Piper and her crew is set for Thursday, the 10th
anniversary of the International Space Station. It will be the 116th spacewalk
dedicated to the $100 billion station's construction and maintenance.
NASA is providing live coverage of Endeavour's STS-126 mission
on NASA TV. Click here for SPACE.com's
mission coverage and NASA TV feed.
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