Houston: It's not easy holding on to a small bag some 320 kilometres above Earth.
Astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper proved that when a tool bag escaped from her after a grease gun inside it exploded outside the international space station.
The briefcase-size bag, containing two grease guns, a putty knife and cloth mitts, was one of the largest items ever to be lost by a spacewalker. It should have been tethered to another bag but it floated away yesterday as she tried to clean up the grease.
But Stefanyshyn-Piper is not the first person to drop something in space. Bulky gloves and weightlessness have led to a history of some clumsy moments at NASA.
Other examples of astronauts accidentally adding to the thousands of pieces of junk already in space:
During a September 2006 spacewalk, astronaut Joe Tanner, working outside the space station with Stefanyshyn-Piper, accidentally released a bolt, spring and washer.
During a July 2006 spacewalk, astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum lost a 14-inch spatula while testing a method to repair the space shuttle.
During a March 2001 spacewalk to mount important equipment to the space station, a foot attachment used to anchor spacewalkers to the end of the space shuttle Discovery s robotic arm managed to float free from astronaut Jim Voss and was lost in space.
Later in the mission, Discovery's thrusters had to be fired to move the spacecraft to a higher orbit to dodge the menacing piece of space junk.
During a December 1998 spacewalk, a thermal cover and two tools escaped from astronaut Jerry Ross as he performed construction work outside the space station.
