An extravehicular activity (EVA) tool bag drifts away from the International Space Station during the mission's first scheduled spacewalk for STS-126.Posted on 11/28/2008 8:15:24 AM PST by BGHater
Amateur astronomers have been monitoring a shiny tool bag that has been orbiting Earth ever since it was dropped last week by an astronaut during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station.
The bag is reportedly about magnitude 6.4, which under most sky conditions is too faint to see with the naked eye.
Veteran spacewalker and Endeavor astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper lost her grip on the backpack-sized bag on Nov. 18 while cleaning up a mess from a leaking grease gun she was carrying to help mop up metal grit from inside a massive gear that turns the space station's starboard solar wings.
The tool bag cost $100,000 and its loss meant astronauts had to share the remaining tool bag for subsequent spacewalks. The tool bag weighs about 30 pounds (14 kg) and is 20 inches (51 cm) wide, about a foot (30 cm) tall and a hand's-width deep, according to John Ray, STS-126 lead spacewalk officer for the flight. The bag contained two grease guns, a scraper tool, a large trash bag and a small debris bag.
Once the tool bag floated away, some thought they'd seen the end of it. Not quite. A satellite tracker at Spaceweather.com now is monitoring both the space station and the tool bag.
After sunset on Nov. 22, Edward Light, using 10 x 50 binoculars, spotted the bag in space while he scanned the sky from his backyard in Lakewood, N.J., Spaceweather.com reported. On the same night, Keven Fetter of Brockville, Ontario, video-recorded the bag as it passed by the star Eta Pisces in the constellation Pisces.
More bag-viewing opportunities are expected.
The tool bag can be seen through binoculars, a few minutes ahead of the space station's orbit. The satellite tracker predicts that the bag will be visible through binoculars from Europe and western North America during a series of passes this week. By late next week, the tool bag should appear in the evening skies over most of North America.
Like other space debris, the tool bag's show will have a fiery end. "We currently predict that the errant tool bag will fall back to Earth in June of next year," said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The date is dependent upon solar activity, so an earlier or later date is possible. As the reentry date draws nearer, a more accurate prediction can be made."
And he expects the entire tool bag will burn up upon reentry. "Although we have not yet conducted a detailed reentry survivability analysis for the tool bag and its contents, it is highly likely that no components will reach the surface of the Earth," Johnson told SPACE.com.
The tool bag is not the only piece of space trash from the station. Other junk includes an unmanned Russian cargo ship and a massive ammonia coolant tank the size of a refrigerator. The coolant tank was intentionally tossed from the space station in 2007, and it burned up in Earth's atmosphere earlier this month. The cargo ship undocked on Nov. 14, but will loiter in orbit for engineering tests before its planned disposal in Earth's atmosphere in early December.
An extravehicular activity (EVA) tool bag drifts away from the International Space Station during the mission's first scheduled spacewalk for STS-126.
You said — “And shortly afterwards, you’d be tracking the remains of a dead astronaut and the bag.”
Yep, that’s what I was implying there... :-)
Better to lose a $100,000 tool bag than an astronaut..., any day...
That's silly - the solution of course is to have Government Run Everything (health care, investments, college, etc.). Then by buying in bulk there will be HUGE savings, plus the fact that I won't have to pay anything. Also - by taking this kind of stuff out of the hands of so many various private companies and putting it under Government Control will streamline things to make everything faster and easier! Thank goodness Obama got elected so he can get us back to the New Deal and get us out of trouble!
At least that's what my liberal acquaintances tell me. Seriously. Time to go bang my head against the wall.
The sad thing is that the tool bag probably had tools in it that have a $10 Craftsman equivalent. Maybe the coating that made them not brittle at absolute zero would be different, but I find it very difficult to believe that the $100k wasn’t mostly waste.
You said — “The sad thing is that the tool bag probably had tools in it that have a $10 Craftsman equivalent. Maybe the coating that made them not brittle at absolute zero would be different, but I find it very difficult to believe that the $100k wasn’t mostly waste.”
I seriously doubt that the $100,000 toolbag (if that’s what it did cost, and I don’t know that for sure) — was a waste. I think that whatever tools that they had (and I don’t even know that..., so it could become obvious once one knows that), that they had to meet whatever specifications that NASA demanded, and that bids were put out for contractors to come up with a price for whatever bid items that NASA had.
And so — if Ace Hardware could have bid a lot lower, I’m sure they would have won the bid... LOL...
LOL... I heard Dennis Miller say once that Billy Mays should be elected president since he seems to have solutions to every problem, and it would be so much fun to hear him being sworn in.
ping
Yes, we sure do have it! Thanks for taking the time to explain this to the Peanut Gallery! I did not know the part about her wiping grease. Good thing she wasn’t out there stuffing the turkey.
yes, this is possible, though not for long, as the apogee (apoapsis for you purists) of the toolbag orbit will eventually fall below the perigee (periapsis) due to atmospheric drag.
There is an odd influence on orbits from the equatorial bulge, tides, solar radiation. These forces tend to cause a net precession of the orbit more so than any other effect. So two bodies initially in roughly the same orbit adjacent to each other will tend to separate over time, more so if there is a slight velocity difference (The bag looked like it was heading off at a 1/4 fps or so).
However the inclination (maximum latitude of the orbit) will remain the same. So the eventually the two bodies will cross paths, effectively with the same orbit but with different bearings.
The details of how to calculate the maximum closing velocity are based on the maximum bearing angle of the tracks. My rough estimate is 28,000mph based on bearing angles for the orbital track where the orbit crosses the equator. An orbital inclination of 51 degrees has a bearing angle of 38 degrees at the equator, so the angle to equator would be 90-38 = 52.
Probably by the time the bag's orbit would have changed enough to be a danger it will have already re-entered.
That was the premise of Showtime's 2-year series - "Dead Like Me". An 18 y/o girl was killed by a falling toilet seat from Soviet space station and becomes a grim reaper. A hilarious but dark dramedy about life.
Easily one the best series on TV from same creator as "Pushing Daisies" and, coincidentally, another reaper on DLM was "Daisey, Daisey Adair".
Apparently she was talking on her cellphone and fixing her mascara which made her lose track of the toolkit.
Pray for W and Our Troops
How many life and death task do you juggle at once in your line of work? IOW give the person a break. $100K accidents on the job or rather losses occur many times a day in our nation. Believe it or not in most cases the person goes on with the job at the same company. We call them accidents all a fact of life. Had she intentionally tossed the pack out and said Whee watch this folks then I could see reason for complaining. Given the venue and complexity of the job she was doing somehow I don't think anyone posting on the thread would be qualified to do any better.
No, $19.95 but if you call right now.........
And tell this idiot to stop yelling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Post 72 was actually meant to post to you. But me thinks some protest too much over this matter.
I don’t care much that she dropped the tools. Happens all the time in a lot of professions. I just don’t see how a small bag of tools is $100k. My guess is more government waste. Privatize NASA. I bet the price of the “special” tools would mysteriously drop through the floor.
Hyphenated-name, female astronauts and toolbags shouldn't’t be brought together in the same solar system, maybe?
Now everyone knows her as "Clumsy".
I don't think in this case it's the $1000 hammer syndrome. You're dealing with some tools that have to be able to take some very extreme temperatures. Remember also the astronauts are in protective suits the tools are not. The metals have to be tempered to withstand the usage stress plus environmental stress. You can't run to Sears or Wally World for such quality. Temperatures can change metal tolerances real quick. So you want tools with minimal change under those conditions.
I can’t even find the pair of pliers I set down somewhere in the shop this morning.
Ignoring the nonsensical response that no force was required in favor of reviewing the "forces" that did exist yields the following.
Force = she took out the tool bag
Force = she set it over to the side
Force = she gave it enough motion
Summary = it was the astronaut that gave the tool bag some “force”
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