Something's out there
2004-02-11 11:01
Moscow - The Russian-United States crew aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have noticed an unidentified object outside their orbiting craft, said space officials on Tuesday.
US astronaut Michael Foale and his Russian colleague Alexander Kaleri last week observed "a 20cm-long strip of soft material" which was floating in space, said a National Aeronautics and Space Administration representative in Russia, Sergei Puzanov.
"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".
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 we will never manage to find out what it was," said a spokesperson for Russian mission control outside Moscow, Valery Lyndin.
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.