Astronauts finish task marred by lost tool bag

November 19, 2008 at 12:00a.m.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A spacewalking astronaut accidentally let go of her tool bag Tuesday after a grease gun inside it exploded, and helplessly watched as the tote and everything inside floated away.

It was one of the largest items ever to be lost by a spacewalker, and occurred during an unprecedented attempt to clean and lube a gummed-up joint on a solar panel.

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper was just starting to work on the joint when the mishap occurred.

She said her grease gun exploded, getting the dark gray stuff all over a camera and her gloves. While wiping herself off, the white, backpack-size bag slipped out of her grip, and she lost all her other tools.

“Oh, great,” she mumbled.

Stefanyshyn-Piper and her fellow spacewalker, Stephen Bowen, then went on to finish their tasks in six hours and 52 minutes by sharing tools. Bowen had his own tool bag with another grease gun, putty knife and ovenlike terry cloth mitts to wipe away metal grit from a clogged joint at the space station.

“Despite my little hiccup, or major hiccup, I think we did a good job out there,” Stefanyshyn-Piper said after returning to the space station.

Flight controllers were assessing the impact the lost bag would have on the next three planned spacewalks.

Earlier, the spacewalkers spotted a screw floating by, but were too far away to catch it. “I have no idea where it came from,” Stefanyshyn-Piper told Mission Control.

Mission Control said the screw was not considered a serious hazard, but did not immediately elaborate on the missing tool bag. Flight controllers were tracking its location in orbit.

The lost bag marred what had been a near-flawless mission by Endeavour and its seven-member crew.

Putting her disappointment aside, Stefanyshyn-Piper — the first woman to be assigned as lead spacewalker for a shuttle flight — carried out her work on the joint with Bowen.

For more than a year, the jammed joint has been unable to automatically point the right-side solar wings toward the sun for maximum energy production. The repair work — expected from the outset to be greasy and hand-intensive — is supposed to take up much of all four spacewalks.

The joint is located near the extreme reaches of the 220-mile-high outpost. The spacewalkers had 85-foot safety tethers to keep them connected to the mother ship at all times.