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Astronaut: ’You’re not going to see us lose another bag’ of needed tools as spacewalk nears
Thursday, November 20, 2008 9:56 AM PST
HOUSTON (AP) — Astronauts vowed to double-check, even triple-check, to make sure a bag of tools is properly tied down during a spacewalk Thursday so it doesn’t float away like one did earlier this week.
“We’re definitely not going to do it again. You’re not going to see us lose another bag,” lead spacewalker Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper said in an interview from the international space station with The Associated Press. “We’re going to double- and triple-check everything from here on out.”
During Tuesday’s spacewalk, the mission’s first, the tool tote floated out of a larger bag as Stefanyshyn-Piper tried to clean grease from a leaking grease gun. Tethered to the lost briefcase-sized tool bag were a pair of grease guns used to lubricate a jammed joint that controls the space station’s rotating solar wing. The bag was one of the largest items ever lost by a spacewalking astronaut, and NASA put a price tag on it of $100,000.
The mishap left Stefanyshyn-Piper and her fellow spacewalkers, Stephen Bowen and Robert “Shane” Kimbrough, with only a single pair of grease guns for three more spacewalks during space shuttle Endeavour’s nearly two-week visit at the space station, 220 miles above Earth.
Thursday’s spacewalk is almost identical to the earlier one, except Stefanyshyn-Piper will have Kimbrough as a partner instead of Bowen. The spacewalkers plan to clean and lubricate the troublesome joint, as well as relocate a railcar used on the space station’s exterior rail track and lubricate the end of the station’s robotic arm.
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