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Duct tape patches up jet backpack

Richard Luscombe

Rolls of duct tape are among the first equipment packed on each of the 115 shuttle missions

— AP Photo/NASA TV

Crew member Jeff Willliams (right) inspects astronaut Mike Fossum's Safer backpack on Wednesday.

Miami: NASA has solved another sticky problem using its favourite space-age repair tool: the humble roll of duct tape. First pressed into service during the homemade repairs that saved Apollo 13 from disaster in 1970, the tape has since been at the centre of a variety of ingenious quick fixes dreamed up by the space agency's scientists.

The latest patch-up will secure astronaut Piers Sellers to his jet-propelled backpack on Wednesday for the final spacewalk of the shuttle Discovery's 13-day mission to the International Space Station.

Two of the pack's four anchor points failed during Monday's second spacewalk, when Dr. Sellers was working on repairs to the orbiting outpost, forcing American astronaut Mike Fossum to tether it into place to stop it floating away.

NASA engineers worked out a plan overnight before giving the go-ahead for Wednesday's walk 352 km above Earth, in which the pair will test experimental repair techniques on the shuttle's heat-resistant tile shield. ``With a little bit of tape and the fact that we're out in the open for most of the time, we're good to go,'' said Dr. Sellers. ``The tape we're using is very slippery, so if we get bumped against something it's more likely to slide over any lumps or latches.''

Rolls of duct tape have been among the first equipment packed on each of the 115 shuttle missions flown since 1981, after its worth was proved 11 years earlier during Apollo 13's journey to the moon when oxygen-producing fuel cells exploded, threatening to suffocate its three astronauts with carbon dioxide.

Engineers on the ground locked themselves in a room with only the equipment they knew was on board and fashioned a makeshift filtration system held together by duct tape that would preserve enough breathable air to allow the astronauts to return to Earth safely.

``The contraption wasn't very handsome, but it worked,'' said Jim Lovell, the Apollo 13 commander who constructed the device following radio instructions from mission control in Houston. More recently rolls of the hard-wearing grey tape were used on board the space station to form the top of a kitchen table that American astronaut Bill Shepherd built with spare aluminium struts in 2001.

The tape's most recent success came last summer during Discovery's first mission since the 2003 Columbia disaster. When protruding pieces of fabric ``gap-filler'' threatened the shuttle's safe return through the heat of re-entry, astronaut Steve Robinson was sent to remove them armed only with a homemade hacksaw, plastic ties, duct tape and Velcro. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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