NASA astronaut accidentally drops piece of mirror during 6-hour spacewalk
The commander of the International Space Station (ISS) said on Monday that losing a mirror during last week’s otherwise successful spacewalk was “a real bummer.”
NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy said he has no idea how the small mirror on his left sleeve came off. The band for the mirror is on pretty tight, he noted, and it may have caught on a metal tether attachment as he exited the airlock on Friday.
Did you know?
- Spacewalking astronauts wear a mirror on each sleeve to see the displays on their chest control panel.
“I just happened to glance down and I saw this reflecting thing disappearing into the darkness, and that was the last I saw of it,” Cassidy said. “That was a real bummer for me.” The rest of the six-hour spacewalk went swimmingly.
He added that the mirror floated away at about 0.3 metres per second. He’ll use a spare for Wednesday’s spacewalk, the second of four he and NASA astronaut Bob Behnken will do to replace old station batteries.
The mirror is said to be about 5 inches by 3 inches and weighed approximately one-tenth of a pound.
Added to space debris
- While millions of pieces of space debris orbit Earth, more than 20,000 items including old rocket parts and busted satellites are big enough to be tracked in order to safeguard the space station and working satellites.
The five-man crew, meanwhile, is closely following the pandemic news back on Earth.
The virus is hitting Houston – home to NASA astronauts and Johnson Space Center – especially hard. Florida is also coping with a spike in cases; that’s where Kennedy Space Center, the launch site, is based.
“Up here, our daily routine doesn’t involve quite so strict measures – really any measures at all. We just go about our time,” Cassidy said. “But we definitely are concerned.”
Cassidy is 2 1/2 months into a six-month mission, along with two Russians who launched with him from Kazakhstan. Behnken and Doug Hurley arrived via SpaceX a month ago; their August splashdown will be the first for a NASA crew in 45 years. It’s the first astronaut flight for SpaceX. AP
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