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This month, witness NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral OHara embark on their inaugural spacewalk as they navigate through space with a floating tool bag.
According to the space agency, the maintenance work outside the International Space Station (ISS) was completed by the pair in six hours and 42 minutes. During the spacewalk on November 1, Moghbeli and OHara focused on the stations solar arrays, which are responsible for tracking the sun. However, they were unable to remove and store a communications electronics box due to time constraints. Instead, they performed a thorough assessment of how this task could be accomplished in a future spacewalk.
On September 15, 2023, Loral O'Hara, a NASA astronaut and member of the main crew for the International Space Station Expedition 70-71, undergoes spacesuit testing as part of pre-launch preparations in Kazakhstan.
Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty Images
While carrying out their hours-long mission, NASA reported that a tool bag accidentally slipped away and became "lost". Flight controllers were able to locate it using the external cameras on the ISS. Thankfully, the tools were not needed for the rest of their duties.
"Mission Control has analyzed the trajectory of the bag and concluded that the chances of it coming into contact with the station are low. NASA has assured that both the crew onboard and the space station are safe, and no further action is needed," stated NASA on its official blog.
As per EarthSky, a website that monitors celestial occurrences, the tool bag is currently circling the Earth in front of the ISS. It may be possible to observe it from Earth using binoculars in the upcoming months until it disintegrates in the Earth's atmosphere.
NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL
New images from NASA missions' asteroid flyby reveal a perplexing finding. Astronauts losing tools in space is not an uncommon occurrence. Back in 2008, Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper experienced her bag floating away while she was engaged in cleaning and lubricating gears on a malfunctioning rotary joint. Similarly, in 2006, during a spacewalk, astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum accidentally lost a 14-inch spatula while testing a repair method for the space shuttle.
Space debris, also known as junk, refers to man-made materials that orbit the Earth but are no longer operational. This debris can range from tiny fragments of paint to discarded components from rocket launches.
As of September 2023, the European Space Agency reported tracking and cataloging 35,290 objects through multiple space surveillance networks. The combined mass of these objects orbiting the Earth exceeds 11,000 tons.
