But They'll Return From Orbit With One Less Spatula

Discovery astronauts Michael Fossum and Piers Sellers were back in their spacesuits Wednesday for their third and final EVA of the current mission.

As the shuttle remained docked with the International Space Station, Fossum and Sellers went into Discovery's cargo bay for a little experiment. The task before them: conduct eight repair tasks involving simulated carbon-carbon heat tiles.

Using a peanut-butter-like putty, they worked for six-and-a-half hours -- using tools that look like spatulas to pat and smooth as they went. The process was much like flipping pancakes, said lead spacewalk officer Tomas Gonzalez-Torres -- saying that the astronauts kept flipping the putty mixture, in order to keep bubbles from forming.

At one point, Sellers' goo-smacking spatula disappeared... apparently floating off in space.

"No sign of the spatula. I think it's gone, gone, gone," Sellers said of the 14-inch long, two-inch wide appliance. At the end of the mission, controllers in Houston needled Sellers further about losing the spatula -- asking the astronaut to verify his spatula count once more.

"Rub it in, Rub it in," Sellers said laughingly to controllers. (Not to worry... it'll probably show up on eBay before too long -- Ed.)

Wednesday's spacewalk was the second test of the compound designed to repair damaged heat shield tiles on a shuttle in orbit -- motivated by the disintegration of Columbia as it re-entered the atmosphere three years ago. This time, the idea was to see how the caulking would behave when allowed to set in the cold of space -- instead of in direct sunlight.

As we said before, the material did prove a bit bothersome. Sellers noted it still swelled and bubbled -- which was expected. But that caused some delays and, in the end, the two astronauts were only able to finish five of the eight experiments.

Fortunately, the test was only a simulation. NASA has declared Discovery's heat shield to be in excellent condition.

In fact, the mission itself... a second return to flight... is thought to have been so successful that NASA now says the ISS build-out program is back on track.

To that end, the shuttle Atlantis is slated to return to space as early as next month... and another shuttle mission is now back on the books for December.

FMI: www.nasa.gov