Spacewalkers lose piece of shielding, use patch instead
Spacewalkers Peggy Whitson and Shane Kimbrough
Two veteran Americans astronauts stationed aboard the International Space Station, lost an important piece of cloth shielding needed for the International Space Station on Thursday when it floated away.
At the time, Peggy Whitson, 57, and station commander Shane Kimbrough, 49, were about midway through a planned 6.5-hour spacewalk to prepare a docking port for upcoming commercial space taxis and to tackle other maintenance tasks.
Whitson, who became the world's most experienced female spacewalker during the outing, told ground control teams that a bag containing the debris shield floated away.
Cameras on the station tracked the debris shield bag as it sailed into the distance.
Peggy Whitson in an earlier mission to the ISS
Fortunately, according to NASA engineers, the debris posed no safety threat to the astronauts or to space station.
The following astronauts are currently aboard the International Space Station.
Andrey Borisenko - (Russia)
Shane Kimbrough - (USA) Commander
Sergey Ryzhikov - (Russia)
Thomas Pesquet - France
Peggy Whitson - (USA)
Oleg Novitskiv - (Russia)
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