This article was published in the daily newspapers Houston Chronicle, and The Arizona Republic, USA, on June 14, 2003.
HOUSTON - A 2 1/2-inch-long flat metal object that drifted away from the International Space Station this week most likely was an identification tag from an external power or data cable, NASA officials said Friday.
Astronaut Ed Lu, one of the station's two tenants, noticed the small object drift past the window of the station's U.S. Destiny science laboratory module early Thursday.
After reporting the observation to NASA's Mission Control, ground-based experts e-mailed images of several potential candidates for the object to the astronaut for identification.
Lu selected the image resembling one of the many numbered tags used to identify individual power and data cables in large wire bundles outside the space station, agency spokesman Kyle Herring said.
