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What’s disturbing is someone was sloppy enough to drop a knob off a work light while working inside the shuttle, then the person failed to report it.

It happened in orbit, so it was one of the astronauts.

It happened in orbit, so it was one of the astronauts.

Yup, there's all sorts of loose stuff in the Orbiter cabin during flight. Including liquids.

Note that the knob isn't wedged between panes, but between the pane and the dashboard panel. I remember when I was a kid and I managed to spill a box of Good&Plentys onto the dashboard of my Mom's 75' Buick Century station wagon. A couple of them ended up, visible, in the area where the dash met the windshield but we couldn't reach them (even with tweezers) and we never could get them out. The candy shell ended up disintegrating leaving the chewy core.

The knob in the Orbiter window is going to be a good deal harder than a Good&Plenty, and since the pane and panel expand/contract during flight there's a substantial risk of it causing unacceptable damage in a situation where a calk & duct-tape solution isn't really an option.