US and Russian space officials say the crew on board the International Space Station has reported an unidentified object outside the orbiting craft.
A NASA representative in Russia says American astronaut Michael Foale and his Russian colleague, Alexander Kaleri, last week observed what they described as a 20 centimetre long strip of soft material which was floating in space.
The representative says it is still unclear what the object was.
He says US and Russian experts are studying photos sent by the crew to determine its origin but insist it posed no danger to the station.
Russian experts say it could have been a piece of the station's insulation, or a strip used to attach some technical equipment to the outside of the station.
"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 Mr 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 said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1042309.htm
A NASA representative in Russia says American astronaut Michael Foale and his Russian colleague, Alexander Kaleri, last week observed what they described as a 20 centimetre long strip of soft material which was floating in space.
The representative says it is still unclear what the object was.
He says US and Russian experts are studying photos sent by the crew to determine its origin but insist it posed no danger to the station.
Russian experts say it could have been a piece of the station's insulation, or a strip used to attach some technical equipment to the outside of the station.
"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 Mr 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 said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1042309.htm
