It should be possible to spot an unusual object in the night sky with binoculars, a free-floating tool bag that slipped earlier this month to astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara during exterior maintenance on the International Space Station (ISS). The Guardian wrote about it.
On a rare all-female spacewalk, NASA astronauts repaired systems that allow the station’s solar panels to continuously rotate behind the Sun to generate electricity.
“During this activity they inadvertently lost one tool bag. Flight controllers spotted the bags on external cameras. The equipment was not needed for the rest of the ascent. The control center analyzed the bag’s trajectory and assessed that the risk of re-contact with the station was low, crew on board and the space station they are safe. There is no need to intervene,” NASA said on its blog after the November 1 launch.
The white tool bag is surprisingly bright and just below the line of visibility in the night sky with the naked eye, but observers should see it with binoculars, according to the specialized server EarthSky. The bag should be a little less bright than Uranus, and it is enough to find the International Space Station using, for example, NASA’s Spot the Station tool. The bag orbits the Earth roughly two to four minutes before the station, writes The Guardian.
The bag is expected to remain in orbit for several months before it descends and ends its journey in a fiery flash as it enters Earth’s atmosphere. According to EarthSky, this should happen around March 2024.
2023-11-13 12:58:41
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