• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Space Station Crew Notice Flying Object

Posted on: Tuesday, 10 February 2004, 06:00 CST

MOSCOW (AFP) -- The Russian-US crew on board the International Space Station (ISS) have noticed an unidentified object outside the orbiting craft, US and Russian space officials revealed.

US astronaut Michael Foale and his Russian colleague Alexander Kaleri last week observed "a 20-centimetre long strip of soft material" which was floating in space, a NASA (news - web sites) representative Sergei Puzanov told AFP on Tuesday.

"For the moment. It's not clear what it is. US and Russian experts are studying photos sent by the crew to Earth to try and determine its origin," he said, adding that it posed "no danger to the station or its crew members."

It could be be a piece of the station's insulation or a strip used to attach some technical equipment to the outside of the station, according to Russian experts quoted by the Interfax news agency.

"It is possible that we will never manage to find out what it was," a spokeman for Russian mission control outside Moscow, Valery Lyndin, told Interfax.

According to Lyndin, there was a similar incident on the now scrapped Russian space station Mir.

The cosmonauts saw a "shining object" which they filmed but experts who studied these images were "unable to establish what the object was," he added.

-----

On the Net:

NASA

More science, space, and technology from RedNova

Copyright © 2004 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.

More News in this Category