A spacewalking astronaut on Friday added to the millions of pieces of junk orbiting the Earth, losing a small mirror on his sleeve as soon as he emerged from the International Space Station for battery work.
Commander Chris Cassidy said that the mirror quickly floated away.
The lost item posed no risk to either the spacewalk or the station, NASA said.
Photo: NASA / Joel Kowsky / EPA-EFE
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 to safeguard the space station and working satellites.
Spacewalking astronauts wear a wrist mirror on each sleeve to get better views while working. The mirror is just 7cm by 12cm and together with its band has a mass of barely 50g.
The mirror came loose in darkness. Cassidy inspected his spacesuit sleeve later in sunlight, but did not see any clues that might explain how the mirror came off.
The rest of the six-hour spacewalk went swimmingly.
Cassidy and Bob Behnken hustled through the first of four planned spacewalks to replace the last bunch of old station batteries. They removed five old batteries and installed two new ones — which checked out fine — getting a jump on their next spacewalk on Wednesday.
They have four more to plug in before the job is complete.
“I think we’ve done enough for one day,” Behnken said.
Once all the new batteries are installed in the coming weeks, the orbiting lab should be good for the rest of its life, according to NASA.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS