In their inaugural spacewalk earlier this month, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara encountered a unique challenge when a tool bag went adrift in space. The space agency reported that the astronauts successfully completed their maintenance tasks outside the International Space Station (ISS) in a mission lasting six hours and 42 minutes.
On November 1, Moghbeli and O’Hara focused on the station’s solar arrays, responsible for tracking the sun. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, they were unable to remove and stow a communications electronics box. This task is now scheduled for a future spacewalk. Meanwhile, the astronauts performed an evaluation of how best to accomplish this objective.
During the extended mission, a tool bag slipped away from the astronauts but was deemed non-essential for their remaining duties. NASA clarified that flight controllers observed the tool bag through the ISS’ external cameras, ensuring that it posed a low risk of recontacting the station. Mission Control affirmed the safety of both the onboard crew and the space station, with no further action required.
According to EarthSky, a website tracking cosmic events, the tool bag is currently orbiting Earth ahead of the ISS, and can potentially be spotted from Earth with a pair of binoculars during the next few months until it disintegrates in our planet’s atmosphere.
This isn’t the first time an astronaut has lost tools in space. In 2008, Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper’s bag floated away while she was cleaning and lubricating gears on a malfunctioning rotary joint. A 2006 spacewalk saw astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum lose a 14-inch spatula while testing a method of repairing the space shuttle. In their inaugural spacewalk
Space debris or junk, like these objects, are artificial materials that orbit Earth but are no longer functional. They can be anything from a small chip of paint to parts discarded during rocket launches.
In September 2023, the European Space Agency estimated 35,290 objects were being tracked and cataloged by the various space surveillance networks, with the total mass of objects orbiting Earth amounting to more than 11,000 tons.