Remember last month when a NASA toolbag accidentally floated off into space during a repair to the International Space Station?
Endeavor astronaut Heidi Stefanyshyn-Piper's loss has turned out to be an amateur star gazers' event of the season. The $100,000 tool bag slipped out of her reach and floated into space while she was trying to clean up a greasy mess on the starboard section of the space station. The tool bag is now dubbed ISS Toolbag and is orbiting the Earth. According to Space.com, Edward Light spotted the orbiting tool bag using 10 x 50 binoculars from his backyard in Lakewood, New Jersey.You can view the loss at about :55 into the video below:The orbiting tool bag weighs approximately 30-pounds. It measures 20-inches wide and 12-inches long. The tool bag contains two grease guns, a scraper tool, a large trash bag and a small debris bag. Given the size and dim magnitude of the orbiting tool bag, star gazers will need binoculars or a small telescope to view it.
Well,you don't need to get a pair of binoculars or a telescope to see the result because someone has already filmed actual footage of the bag zooming around our planet:
Not exactly exciting I know but for us space nerds this is actually kind of cool (in a "man, that chick sure screwed the pooch and now everyone down here can see it" kind of way).
1 comment:
I often wonder if the space program isn't one of the biggest wastes of money going. Not so much the Google Maps Satellite part, so much as the colonizing Mars part.
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