Space Station astronaut loses mirror during maintenance spacewalk – CNET

While performing routine repairs on the World Situation Characteristic, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy unintentionally added to the express junk already floating spherical our planet. 

As Cassidy swapped out an limitless battery pack weighing 428 pounds (194 kilograms) on the exterior of the World Situation Characteristic, a miniature judge linked to his spacesuit broke off and floated away, CNN reported Friday.

Such mirrors are linked to the wrist to abet astronauts inquire of electrical ingredients on a spacesuit and to perceive into any blind spots that can also occur. The mirrors measure 5 by 3 inches (7 by 12 centimeters) and weigh one-tenth of a pound (50 grams).

Aside from the judge mishap, Cassidy and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Behnken “performed the overall scheduled work on their first of four spacewalks to interchange batteries that supply vitality for the express assign’s photo voltaic arrays, as well to preliminary responsibilities before every little thing deliberate for the second scheduled spacewalk next Wednesday,” NASA stated in a weblog put up Friday.  

The two astronauts replaced the reward nickel-hydrogen batteries with unusual lithium-ion batteries. The unusual batteries store energy generated by the assign’s photo voltaic arrays to give vitality to the microgravity laboratory when the assign is no longer in sunlight.

Friday’s spacewalk lasted for 6 hours and 7 minutes. Cassidy and Behnken are scheduled to contrivance more responsibilities on a second spacewalk on July 1.

NASA didn’t without delay reply to a search information from for comment.