On the first of November, astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and
Loral O'Hara spent almost seven hours outside of the international space
station, performing maintenance on the solar arrays. At some point during
their extra-vehicular activity, a large tool bag they were using floated away
from the space station and was lost. I suppose this sort of thing happens in
space quite frequently. On Earth, when we momentarily set something down,
gravity generally keeps it where we put it. The bag in question isn’t really “lost.”
Flight controllers know exactly where it is, and where it’s going to be. They’ve
determined the tools it carries aren’t irreplaceable, and the bag itself poses
no threat to the station or its occupants. At the moment, the missing tool bag
is in orbit a bit ahead of the station. It can be spotted with a decent pair of
binoculars for at least the next couple of months, until its orbit decays and it burns up in Earth’s
atmosphere.
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