Anyone has an accident. Dropping an object can be the most normal thing in the world. But when it happens outside of it, in space, it can create a much bigger problem. If you fall from the International Space Station, for example.
The largest object dropped from the ISS was a 40-pound bag of tools, valued at $100,000. The accident happened to the astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, of the United States, during their spacewalk on November 18, 2008.
Fortunately, it posed no threat to the station, much less to anyone on Earth. But Stefanyshyn-Piper went through an awkward moment.
When an astronaut performs an EVA, they come out with various tools to do work outside the ISS. All this with thick gloves, and with the natural difficulty of outer space.
As Stefanyshyn-Piper later recounted, he lost the bag of tools when he was trying to clean up the mess created by a broken grease gun. He never knew how it broke out.
“That was definitely not the highlight of the EVA,” said the American astronaut. “It was very disheartening to watch him float away.”
NASA tracked down the tool bag, marking it as an object 2008-059B in orbit. It could even be seen perfectly from our planet, with a telescope. On its return to Earth, it caught fire completely, until it was lost in the atmosphere on August 3, 2009, almost nine months after the accident.
Another awkward moment for astronaut Stefanyshyn-Piper
Born in 1963, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper rose to the rank of captain in the United States Navy. Before the famous loss of the tools in space, she starred in another curious fact, fainting in 2006 after a trip with the shuttle Atlantis.
While speaking to hundreds of people at the welcoming ceremony, the astronaut fainted twice. NASA explained that she suffered “a couple of small bouts of dizziness”, and that it was not necessary to hospitalize her.
“The double sickness could be because the astronaut is still adjusting to Earth’s gravity, a relatively common phenomenon among those returning from space,” EFE pointed out at the time.
Stefanyshyn-Piper participated in two space missions, in addition to working in the Exxon Houston oil tanker decommissioning project off the coast of Barbers Point, and in the Peruvian Navy’s rescue of the Pacocha submarine.
As we said at the beginning, an accident has anyone.