This story was updated at 10:10 p.m.
EST.
A spacewalking astronaut faced down a
grease gun explosion only to lose a tool bag on Tuesday during an ambitious
clean-and-grease job outside the International Space Station.
Veteran spacewalker Heide
Stefanyshyn-Piper lost
her grip on the bag while cleaning up a mess from a leaking grease gun she
was carrying to help mop up metal grit from inside a
massive gear that turns the space station's starboard solar wings.
"Oh great," Stefanyshyn-Piper said
as the backpack-sized bag drifted away. "I guess one of my crew lock bags was
not transferred and it's loose."
NASA mission controllers tracked the
30-pound (13-kg) bag's departure with cameras and are discussing the impact of
the lost tools it contained for the three remaining spacewalks scheduled while
NASA's shuttle Endeavour is docked at the space station. The shuttle launched
toward the station last week and will remain until at least Thanksgiving.
"It's floating station aft and
starboard," Stefanyshyn-Piper reported.
Mission managers said late Tuesday
that the bag was flying ahead and below the space station and moving further
away by the minute.
"It is definitely moving away from
the station with every orbit," said space station flight director Ginger Kerrick. "No concern whatsoever for recontact at this moment with the data that we have."
The lost bag and leaky grease gun
marred what had been until then a smooth spacewalk, with Stefanyshyn-Piper and
fellow spacewalker Steve Bowen floating out of the station's Quest airlock at
1:09 p.m. EST (1809 GMT). The six-hour, 52-minute excursion marked the
third career spacewalk for Stefanyshyn-Piper and the first for Bowen.
"Welcome to EVA," Endeavour
astronaut Shane Kimbrough told Bowen, using NASA's technical term for
spacewalks, as he choreographed the excursion from inside the space shuttle.
The two spacewalkers also delivered
a spare part for the station's cooling system and retrieved an
empty station nitrogen tank for the trip home aboard Endeavour among other
maintenance tasks. But the highlight of their spacewalk was the space station
gear clean up.
"In spite of our little hiccup, one
major hiccup there, I think we did a pretty good job today," Stefanyshyn-Piper
said at the end.
"You were all champs," spacecraft
communicator Mark Vander Hei added. "You rolled with the
punches and made it all happen."
Space gear grease job
Known as a Solar Alpha Rotary Joint,
the massive gear is 10 feet (3 meters) wide and designed to spin the space
station's starboard solar wings so they always face the sun as the station
orbits Earth. While a similar gear on the station's port side has been working
fine, the starboard side has ground down its lubricating layer of gold. It's
been damaged and hasn't worked properly for more than a year.
"There does seem to be a lot of
debris," Stefansyshyn-Piper said as she lifted covers
off the delicate mechanism to get a glimpse of its inner workings.
Stefanyshyn-Piper and Bowen removed
several of the gear's 11 damaged bearings, used mitt-like wet and dry wipes to
clean the gear's metal ring, and used the space version of a caulk gun to
squeeze out gray Braycote grease and lubricate the
mechanism. They then replaced the old bearings with new ones in work that
appeared to be smooth going.
By the end of the four spacewalks
planned for Endeavour's 15-day mission, all 11 of the bearings will be replaced
and the port side gear will be greased up for good measure, mission managers
said.
With today's spacewalk,
Stefanyshyn-Piper has an even 20 hours of total spacewalking
time, while Bowen ended with six hours, 52 minutes. The mission's next
spacewalk is set for Thursday.
Interior renovation
While Stefanyshyn-Piper and Bowen
worked outside the space station, their crewmates unpacked science equipment, a
second kitchen, extra bathroom and new water recycling system designed to turn astronaut urine,
sweat and other wastewater back into drinkable water.
The two
life support systems are part of more than 14,000 pounds (6,350 kg) of new
equipment arrived at the station aboard Endeavour to lay the groundwork for
larger, six-person crews. The cargo pod carrying the new gear is also packed
with two spare bedrooms and a space cooler that will allow
station astronauts the luxury of chilled water and other drinks.
The new additions will turn the
space station from a three-bedroom, one-bath, one-kitchen
home into five-bedroom, two-kitchen, two-bath research outpost, shuttle
astronauts have said.
The astronauts are so far ahead with the move-in work, they may not need an extra day docked at the station to install all the new hardware, Kerrick said.
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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