JAKARTA – Usually, people turn to the sky to see the spectacular view of a planet, a meteor shower or an eclipse. However, on November 24 the sky will present a more unusual sight, namely a tool bag scattered by astronauts during spacewalk and will be visible as it crosses mainland England.
NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara lost the bag while trying to repair a solar panel on the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this month.
The bag was later spotted by astronomers, who said that because the device was so bright, it should be visible to people on land if they had binoculars or a telescope.
The bag will be visible between 18:24 and 18:34 GMT November 24, as long as the weather does not obstruct the view.
People in the south of England are likely to have the best chance of seeing it, and the weather forecast Met Office the current suggests that it should not be too cloudy at that time. The best time to see it is on November 24 between 17:30 and 17:41 GMT.
The bag, which orbits the Earth at 17,000 mph about five minutes faster than the ISS, is classified as space junk and given the ID number 58229/1998-067WC.
Moghbeli notified mission control after the bag was spotted: “In the most unlikely of events, Satoshi was actually… taking photos of Mount Fuji and also captured a great photo of the missing item, a nice crew key bag from yesterday. Maybe a bag it wanted to see Mount Fuji, I think.”
The astronauts were actually planning to release a communications device called a radio frequency group but ran out of time during their six-hour spacewalk.
They had lifted some insulation to get a better view of the task ahead, and it is believed the bag went flying in the process.
According to astronomy sites earthsky.orgit should be possible to see the tool bag on a clear night ‘with a good pair of binoculars’.
They said that as the bag loses altitude, it should emerge between two to four minutes earlier than the ISS.
Mission control joked that the bag should have been equipped with Apple’s AirTag tracking device so it could be found in the next orbit by the crew.
If the bag is similar to the bag lost in 2008 by astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, replacement costs could reach more than 82,000 pounds (Rp. 1.5 billion).
He lost his bag while cleaning a leaking grease gun while working on one of the space shuttle Endeavor’s solar panels.
Some amateur astronomers even hold ‘tool-watching parties’ to follow the bag as it orbits the Earth for months.
Tag: inggris iss nasa
2023-11-21 03:05:00
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