Stinging Eye Almost Derails Spacewalk

Eyelash, space dust, tears … who knows what was, but an astronaut today got something in his eye that stung "like crazy"—and almost interrupted a spacewalk. Several minutes later, Andrew Feustel assured everyone his eye was feeling better and the third spacewalk of the Endeavour continued as planned. The incident came as the spacewalk hit the five-hour mark. Feustel and Mike Fincke had just finished running power cables from the US side of the orbiting house to the Russian half. Feustel managed to rub his eye against a strap in his helmet and said that helped.

Spacewalkers noted that the problem with tears in space is that "they don't fall off of your eye ... they kind of stay there." The Endeavor is scheduled to land for the last time on June 1. NASA will close out the 30-year shuttle program in July with one last mission by Atlantis. (Click to read more on the Endeavor's rather eventful final mission.)