NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara were on their first spacewalk this month when a tool bag accidentally became floating in space. According to information from the space agency, the astronauts spent a total of six hours and 42 minutes performing maintenance work on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS).
During the Nov. 1 spacewalk, Mokbelly and O’Hara successfully completed work on the space station’s solar arrays, which track the sun. However, they did not have enough time to remove and store a communications electronics box, so they decided to leave this task for a future spacewalk. Instead, they evaluated ways to accomplish the task.
NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli leaves the launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida on August 26, 2023 | Image source:CNN
During this long mission, a tool bag accidentally slipped and was declared “lost” by NASA. Flight controllers captured the situation through the ISS’s external cameras. Fortunately, these tools are not necessary for the rest of their tasks.
NASA said on its official blog: “Mission Control analyzed the tool bag’s trajectory and determined that the risk of it re-colliding with the space station is low and no action is required. The space station and its personnel are safe.”
NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara tests his spacesuit during pre-launch preparations in Kazakhstan on September 15, 2023. ｜Image source:CNN
According to EarthSky, a website that tracks cosmic events, the tool bag is currently in orbit on the ISS in front of Earth, and there’s a chance it will be spotted by people using telescopes on Earth in the coming months before it enters our atmosphere and breaks up.
This isn’t the first time an astronaut has lost a tool in space. In 2008, Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper was cleaning and lubricating a faulty swivel joint when her bag floated away. Also during the 2006 spacewalk, astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum lost a 14-inch shovel while testing methods to repair the spacecraft.
Astronauts are taking a spacewalk｜Picture source:dkfindout
These objects, like other space junk or debris, are man-made materials orbiting the Earth that have lost their functionality. They range in size from as small as paint chips to as large as parts discarded from rocket launches.
The European Space Agency estimated in September 2023 that there are currently 35,290 objects being tracked and registered by various space monitoring networks. The total weight of these objects orbiting the Earth exceeds 11,000 tons.
source:CNN
