Two Discovery astronauts, the newest residents of the International Space Station, have taken a spacewalk to make improvements to the outside of their new home.
The crew of the space shuttle was to add a new Italian-built cargo module to the station, hours after a problem-filled spacewalk that included the accidental creation of Earth's newest satellite.
Astronaut Andrew Thomas, using the shuttle's 15-metre robotic arm, was to lift the Leonardo module from the shuttle's payload bay and mount it on the space station's Destiny laboratory module.
Leonardo carries about five tons of equipment and supplies, including the station's most sophisticated science hardware and a portable emergency room.
Their work was slowed by mishaps and glitches and by the time they finished, they had set a new record of eight hours, 56 minutes, for the longest spacewalk in shuttle history.
Astronaut James Voss first lost his grip on a foot restraint he was to attach to the shuttle's robotic arm. The restraint seemed to simply float away from the shuttle, but like the shuttle, it was orbiting Earth at 8 km a second.
The shoebox-sized apparatus now has its own orbit and because it could threaten other spacecraft, it will have to be tracked like any other satellite until it burns up in Earth's atmosphere months from now.
The spacewalk continued after Voss retrieved a spare foot restraint. Astronaut Susan Helms nearly had a similar mishap as she left Discovery's airlock and a bag holding a hydrazine detector followed her out.
"Uh oh," said Helms. Voss was able to rescue the equipment bag before it floated out of the shuttle's payload bay.
