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Friday, November 24, 2023
New Image Shows Lost ISS Tool Bag Zipping Around Earth Orbit
gizmodo.com: And there it goes. The astronaut tool bag that floated away during the most recent extravehicular activity outside the International Space Station (ISS) appears as a tiny white speck in this new astronomical image.
6 comments:
Karter LaBarre
said...
This is so silly! I think that losing a tool bag in space is one of the funniest things I've ever heard. astronauts go through so much training and are incredibly disciplined, but they are still human. I think they almost seem like this otherworldly dream that all kids have but never really achieve, except for very few. but I think this brings them down to earth, hahaha I'm funny. I wonder how long we will keep track of this tool bag, and how long it will stay intact for. I'm actually very curious as to how this tool bag is holding up in space. Also, how do you design tools for space? It is incredibly fascinating to see what people do through space exploration, but the fact that we design tools and other things that can survive in the zero gravity space kind of baffles me and I've never thought that deeply about it before. I hope the tool bag has a lovely trip, and it enjoys its time floating around up there.
It is so fascinating that a misplaced astronaut tool bag is just out in orbit outside the international space station! The image captured by the virtual telescope project showing the tool bag zooming through space is honestly a little worrying to look at. It is hard for me to wrap my head around the sheer speed that the tool bag is hurdling through space at 17500 miles per hour. It is crazy to think about the forces that play beyond Earth. It is also surreal to see the bag as a tiny white dot amidst vast emptiness. There is a concern about the safety protocols of the international space station, though. Accidentally losing a tool bag during a spacewalk and it being cataloged as a +6 magnitude object, extremely close to the visibility limit to the naked eye, is a concerning risk for objects drifting in Earth's orbit. As funny as this is, I hope that they are working to take preventative measures for the future.
This article made me giggle. I think that it is important to note how the author does not talk down the astronauts for accidentally letting a tool bag just float around in space but in a more enlightened manner. Having a sense of reality that no matter what job someone has they still make, like the author says, “oopsies”. That word alone made me giggle the most. I think that this article is a reality check that even with a lot of training ang rehearsal people make mistakes and it is okay to learn from it, maybe fix it and move on. There is no need to dwell on facts that are just going to make someone look down on you when we are all humans. The article does share details how fast the tool bag is moving and how they had to use a specific telescope to time what is happening to the tools bag to make sure the tool bag won't harm anything nor anyone.
This makes me wonder about the other junk that is orbiting the Earth. It has been awhile since I thought about the debris or anything to do with the Earth's orbit. It feels that the focus on space recently has been more about Mars or other planets instead of closer to home. While a rogue tool bag seems largely inconsequential even at high speeds, it is hardly the only rogue object orbiting the Earth. While they expect the tool bag to lose velocity and disintegrate in the Earth's atmosphere, there are plenty of other things that are just out there in the Earth's orbit. According to this article from PBS (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/analysis-why-trash-in-space-is-a-major-problem-with-no-clear-fix), the atmosphere is only accumulating more debris. It is concerning especially with many people's fixation on space exploration and colonization. I wonder if space debris will reach a level where we need to be concerned about it regularly entering our atmosphere.
This is pretty funny, but wow, that’s gotta be like a gazillion dollars of Fancy Space Tools that got lost in that bag. And a bajillion different forms of paperwork to fill out analyzing what went wrong and how to prevent a tool bag from floating away ever again. I imagine everything is supposed to be strapped on properly, so I wonder if a strap broke or there was some sort of other mechanical error, or if it was just a human error and some sort of connection or clip was missed. Regardless, it’s defintiely better to lose a tool bag floating away in space than an astronaut, and to maybe forget to properly clip on your tool bag rather than forget to properly clip on your space suit. It’s pretty funny how that bag is just out there orbiting now, and it’s just going to be hanging out there for a while until it burns up.
I love articles like this because they remind me that astronauts, while they are geniuses and have years of training, are humans just like everyone else and they make mistakes. This incident sparked a lot of interviews with astronauts about spacewalks, how they work, and the safety procedures surrounding them. I find spacewalks to be fascinating and really cool. I did learn that spacewalks usually last for 12+ hours, so the astronauts wear adult diapers in their space suits when conducting a spacewalk. The parts of the article that discuss the telescopic imagery used to see the tool bag and the complication that comes with the bag orbiting at ungodly speeds were really interesting. It is really intriguing that our imagery technology is really advanced and the scientists were only about to get a single 2-second exposure image of the bag, and it just looks like a white dot in the night sky.
6 comments:
This is so silly! I think that losing a tool bag in space is one of the funniest things I've ever heard. astronauts go through so much training and are incredibly disciplined, but they are still human. I think they almost seem like this otherworldly dream that all kids have but never really achieve, except for very few. but I think this brings them down to earth, hahaha I'm funny. I wonder how long we will keep track of this tool bag, and how long it will stay intact for. I'm actually very curious as to how this tool bag is holding up in space. Also, how do you design tools for space? It is incredibly fascinating to see what people do through space exploration, but the fact that we design tools and other things that can survive in the zero gravity space kind of baffles me and I've never thought that deeply about it before. I hope the tool bag has a lovely trip, and it enjoys its time floating around up there.
It is so fascinating that a misplaced astronaut tool bag is just out in orbit outside the international space station! The image captured by the virtual telescope project showing the tool bag zooming through space is honestly a little worrying to look at. It is hard for me to wrap my head around the sheer speed that the tool bag is hurdling through space at 17500 miles per hour. It is crazy to think about the forces that play beyond Earth. It is also surreal to see the bag as a tiny white dot amidst vast emptiness. There is a concern about the safety protocols of the international space station, though. Accidentally losing a tool bag during a spacewalk and it being cataloged as a +6 magnitude object, extremely close to the visibility limit to the naked eye, is a concerning risk for objects drifting in Earth's orbit. As funny as this is, I hope that they are working to take preventative measures for the future.
This article made me giggle. I think that it is important to note how the author does not talk down the astronauts for accidentally letting a tool bag just float around in space but in a more enlightened manner. Having a sense of reality that no matter what job someone has they still make, like the author says, “oopsies”. That word alone made me giggle the most. I think that this article is a reality check that even with a lot of training ang rehearsal people make mistakes and it is okay to learn from it, maybe fix it and move on. There is no need to dwell on facts that are just going to make someone look down on you when we are all humans. The article does share details how fast the tool bag is moving and how they had to use a specific telescope to time what is happening to the tools bag to make sure the tool bag won't harm anything nor anyone.
This makes me wonder about the other junk that is orbiting the Earth. It has been awhile since I thought about the debris or anything to do with the Earth's orbit. It feels that the focus on space recently has been more about Mars or other planets instead of closer to home. While a rogue tool bag seems largely inconsequential even at high speeds, it is hardly the only rogue object orbiting the Earth. While they expect the tool bag to lose velocity and disintegrate in the Earth's atmosphere, there are plenty of other things that are just out there in the Earth's orbit. According to this article from PBS (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/analysis-why-trash-in-space-is-a-major-problem-with-no-clear-fix), the atmosphere is only accumulating more debris. It is concerning especially with many people's fixation on space exploration and colonization. I wonder if space debris will reach a level where we need to be concerned about it regularly entering our atmosphere.
This is pretty funny, but wow, that’s gotta be like a gazillion dollars of Fancy Space Tools that got lost in that bag. And a bajillion different forms of paperwork to fill out analyzing what went wrong and how to prevent a tool bag from floating away ever again. I imagine everything is supposed to be strapped on properly, so I wonder if a strap broke or there was some sort of other mechanical error, or if it was just a human error and some sort of connection or clip was missed. Regardless, it’s defintiely better to lose a tool bag floating away in space than an astronaut, and to maybe forget to properly clip on your tool bag rather than forget to properly clip on your space suit. It’s pretty funny how that bag is just out there orbiting now, and it’s just going to be hanging out there for a while until it burns up.
I love articles like this because they remind me that astronauts, while they are geniuses and have years of training, are humans just like everyone else and they make mistakes. This incident sparked a lot of interviews with astronauts about spacewalks, how they work, and the safety procedures surrounding them. I find spacewalks to be fascinating and really cool. I did learn that spacewalks usually last for 12+ hours, so the astronauts wear adult diapers in their space suits when conducting a spacewalk. The parts of the article that discuss the telescopic imagery used to see the tool bag and the complication that comes with the bag orbiting at ungodly speeds were really interesting. It is really intriguing that our imagery technology is really advanced and the scientists were only about to get a single 2-second exposure image of the bag, and it just looks like a white dot in the night sky.
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