Tech Shout!

Well it gets dirty up there in space too! Astronauts at the International Space Station have participated in a cleaning activity. According to an AP story, a spacewalking astronaut hurled two large chunks of junk off the orbital post on Monday.

Oh, if you are wondering what junk do they have in space? First, Clayton Anderson threw a 200-pound camera mounting and then proceeded to throw a refrigerator-size ammonia tank away from the station! As you must have guessed, it did get a little tricky to throw the tank, which was sent up in 2001 to supply spare coolant in case of a leak at the orbiting complex.

Clayton Anderson spacewalked to throw out the junk. Though he officiates basketball games, he chose to refer to baseball saying, “Well, in that case, give Brad Lidge and Roy Oswalt a call and tell them I just hummed a 17,500-mph fastball. I’ll be sending my bill in the mail for trash disposal.” Anderson was excited about the whole thing but he did add later, “Our spaceship Earth is a beautiful place.”

Usually National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) avoids throwing junk in to space. Nevertheless, this time around they have a 2010 deadline for ending all shuttle flights. Anyway, the flight controllers expect the ammonia tank to circle Earth for 10 or 11 months before re-entering the atmosphere and then burning up.

Clayton Anderson was joined by Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, who replaced a bad circuit breaker and cleaned a docking port. The space walk took an hour longer than planned and it lasted a whole seven hours. It was being monitored by Cosmonaut Oleg Kotov from inside, who also operated the crane on which Anderson was standing for the junk toss.