CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA is trying to identify a small object seen floating outside the International Space Station on Thursday morning that probably came from the station itself.
Astronaut Ed Lu spotted the object outside the window of the U.S. laboratory and took pictures of it.
"He described it as a rectangular-shaped piece of metal about 5 centimeters long," NASA spokeswoman Kylie Moritz said at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Ground controllers are analyzing Lu's photos but don't yet have enough information about the object's direction of travel to determine where it came from.
"It is likely it came from the station because of its similar speed, and it is in the same orbit," Moritz said.
The object has since moved out of sight.
NASA is asking U.S. Strategic Command to use its resources to gather more information about the object, she said, but she didn't have specifics on what it would do.
Strategic Command was able to track a small object seen floating near Columbia shortly after the shuttle entered orbit on its last mission.
"It could be some sort of external label, based on its size, but that's just our first thought," Moritz said of the object Lu saw. Further analysis of the photo, along with conversations with the Russians overnight about their hardware, may help NASA figure out what it was.
Ground controllers were planning to transmit pictures of labels to Lu in hopes he can compare them with the object he saw and possibly identify it. Labels can be roughly the dimensions Lu described. A Russian Progress supply ship docked with the station Wednesday morning. Other than the docking and a normal attitude shift, no unusual events have occurred that might explain the object, Moritz said.
"Based on this object and its apparent small mass . . . it would be unlikely to seriously damage the station," Moritz said.
There were no immediate plans to use the station's robot arm to inspect the station's surfaces, she said.
Lu and cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko are in the middle of a six-month stay aboard the station. They are expected to be relieved in October by another two-man crew, who will fly on a Russian Soyuz to the station.
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