NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara accidentally dropped their tool bag while performing maintenance on the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit.
The routine walk, which occurred on November 2, lasted 6 hours and 42 minutes. In the middle of their long day, their tool bag fell and was lost in space.
That was the little mistake
Moghbeli and O’Hara were able to complete one of the two main objectives of the spacewalk, replacing one of the 12 bearing assemblies on the port’s alpha solar rotary joint, which allows the assemblies to follow the Sun and generate electricity to power the station. .
While working on this aspect, one of the astronauts dropped a bag of tools.
Fortunately, none of the lost tools were needed for the rest of the mission, and the ISS blog reports: “Mission Control told the station crew that the solar panel is working fine after bearing replacement.” .
The spacewalkers also removed a handling bar to prepare for the future installation of a deployable solar panel and properly configured a cable that previously interfered with an external camera.
However, the astronauts had planned to remove and stow an electronic communications box called the Radio Frequency Group, but there was not enough time during the spacewalk to complete the work.
The duo lifted a few layers of insulation to make a better assessment of how to approach the job before replacing the insulation and postponing the task for a future spacewalk.