REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Astronaut NASA Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara mark space travel (spacewalk) their first this month with a kit bag floating through space. According to the space agency, Moghbeli and O’Hara completed their maintenance work outside the International Space Station (ISS) in six hours and 42 minutes.
Moment space travel on November 1, Moghbeli and O’Hara finished work on the station’s solar array, which tracks the sun, but they ran out of time to remove and stow the communications electronics box. Leaving this task for future space travel, the pair instead undertook an assessment of how the work could be done.
During the hours-long mission, NASA said, a bag slipped and went missing. Flight controllers saw it using the ISS’s external camera. Luckily, those tools weren’t needed for their next assignment.
“Mission Control analyzed the bag’s trajectory and determined that the risk of re-contact with the station was low and the crew on board and the space station were safe and no action was required,” NASA said on its official blog, reported CNNTuesday (14/11/2023).
According to EarthSky, a website that tracks cosmic events, the equipment bag is currently orbiting Earth ahead of the ISS, and could potentially be visible from Earth with binoculars for the next few months until it disintegrates in our planet’s atmosphere. This is not the first time an astronaut has lost equipment in space.
In 2008, Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper’s bag went flying while she was cleaning and lubricating the gears on a malfunctioning swivel joint. On a 2006 spacewalk, astronauts Piers Sellers and Michael Fossum lost a 14-inch spatula while testing a space shuttle repair method.
Space debris or trash, like these objects, is artificial material that orbits the Earth but no longer functions. These objects can be anything, from small chips of paint to parts discarded during a rocket launch.
As of September 2023, the European Space Agency estimates that 35,290 objects were tracked and cataloged by various space surveillance networks, with the total mass of objects orbiting the Earth amounting to more than 11,000 tonnes.
The Indonesian U-17 World Cup will take place from 10 November to 2 December 2023. Immediately buy and get official tickets to the U-17 World Cup matches in Jakarta, Bandung, Solo and Surabaya
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2023-11-14 09:49:15
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