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Astronauts drop tool bag into orbit that you can see with binoculars
- Throwfi44 3y agoThere is a rumour that several years ago some tools were dropped on purpose. Because astronaut did not liked to stay on orbit, and he/she wanted to return to Earth ahead of schedule.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoThey could have just went on strike like skylab
- garblegarble 3y agoAre you sure that's not a half-remembered version of Russian propaganda[1], where they tried to blame NASA Astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor with drilling holes into a Russian spacecraft, ostensibly so she could get sent back to earth early for medical treatment? They were trying at the time to deflect blame for what were clearly Russian manufacturing defects (especially in hindsight, given the number of defects and accidents Roscosmos have been responsible for lately). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serena_Au%C3%B1%C3%B3n-Chancellor#Russian_ISS_accusations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serena_Au%C3%B1%C3%B3n-Chancel...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- werdnapk 3y agoIn 2008, another tool bag was dropped.
- fouronnes3 3y agoAnyone got a link to an official report detailing what happened? The article is kinda light on details, but I assume this is a major mishap that can only happen if multiple things go wrong simultaneously? Everything m they do up there is a precisely choreographed dance so it would be interesting to read a technical report on that.
- EA 3y agohttps://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2023/11/01/astronauts-enter-station-complete-spacewalk/ https://blogs.nasa.gov/spacestation/2023/11/01/astronauts-en...
- thedaly 3y agoThere aren't very many details in that post either. > During the activity, one tool bag was inadvertently lost. Flight controllers spotted the tool bag using external station cameras. The tools were not needed for the remainder of the spacewalk. Mission Control analyzed the bag’s trajectory and determined that risk of recontacting the station is low and that the onboard crew and space station are safe with no action required.
- Mizza 3y agoThere's a copypasta floating around - badum tish - giving an account of a particular US astronaut - https://futurism.com/the-byte/russia-threatens-nasa-astronaut-sabotage https://futurism.com/the-byte/russia-threatens-nasa-astronau... - who caused this and a lot of other major problems. Accusations of misinformation, yada yada yada, but it sounds like it might have been a case of the roommate from hell, only in space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vXdRUIZ_EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vXdRUIZ_EM whoops
- space_fountain 3y agoThe video was of a different incident right and the person mentioned in the first link hasn't been on the station in years?
- RetpolineDrama 3y agoFor a highly trained astronaut that "oops" in the video seemed extremely careless.
- hnbad 3y agoMy most charitable interpretation is that the astronaut thought the bag was attached to a tether given that it had a clip - which sadly wasn't attached to anything.
- WalterBright 3y agoWhy aren't such things connected with a lanyard to the spacecraft?
- sonicanatidae 3y agoThey usually are. I suspect this was a missed step by someone.
- kurthr 3y agoThere's a giant swimming pool in Galveston which has a full underwater replica of the ISS for astronaut training. There are other scuba divers that work with the astronauts when they practice maintenance. One of their jobs (like the invisible waiter at a high end restaurant that makes dirty utensils go away) is to "retrieve" anything that the astronauts "put down". Often the maintenance jobs are multi-hour "space walks". Apparently, it basically happens every training and the divers take great joy in putting the items on the Lost Wall for everyone to see.
- kortex 3y ago> One of their jobs (like the invisible waiter at a high end restaurant that makes dirty utensils go away) is to "retrieve" anything that the astronauts "put down". This is fascinating. I'm not quite following what is meant by retrieval though. I assume from context the divers aren't retrieving to return the tools to the astronaut, and rather are emulating the drift that occurs in a frictionless vacuum? "Oops I set it 'down' and now it's 200m away". > Lost Wall I presume this is a "Wall of Shame" of sorts?
- Fwirt 3y agoIt seems that much like we become able to delegate tasks like setting down a coffee cup to our subconscious on Earth, after a while in microgravity astronauts become accustomed to "setting things down" in midair. It's could be that just like in a shop on the ground, "where did I set down that wrench" is an issue; an astronaut might "set down" a tool in midair on a spacewalk and forget that they're not in a confined space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVxaL8CAO4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVxaL8CAO4M
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 4gotunameagain 3y agoThis has happened two more times: https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-astronauts-lost-items-in-space-dropped-bag-2023-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-astronauts-lost-items-i...
- kristianp 3y agoThey need a drone to go and pick these dropped items. How much fun that would be!
- crazygringo 3y agoNow you've got me genuinely curious -- does something like that exist? A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand? It seems like it would be "relatively" simple, and useful for basic tasks that don't need a full human. I mean, now that you mention it, it really seems like that ought to be a thing, and that this would be a perfect use case for it. (Visual inspection of the ISS exterior would be another.)
- mikepurvis 3y agoI think in theory Robotnaut 2 was supposed to be something that could eventually be that: https://www.nasa.gov/robonaut2/ https://www.nasa.gov/robonaut2/ But going with a humanoid form factor made it overlay ambitious and all that complexity prevented it from being useful for the kinds of basic teleop + grab tasks you're envisioning.
- gumby 3y ago> A space drone with gas propulsion and a grasping hand? Please, for this application you should use the term, "gripping hand". To be more substantive: now you mention it I haven't heard of such a device and I also wonder why. Makes sense for inspection (but how much happens?) though retrieving lost tools sound quite difficult. And though difficult, it seems like something worth becoming good at. Seems like a 1U might be big enough to hold a small drone and some things to retrieve. However you'd have to design your experiment carefully so that something you failed to retrieve would rather soon reenter the atmosphere and not become dangerous orbiting junk. I don't know how easy this would be: what if the drone tried to grab it and added a non-normal (i.e. sideways) component that put the target on a potentially destructive trajectory?
- ccooffee 3y agoAside: does the phrase "grasping hand" have a particular meaning in robotics jargon? (Or is there a different reason to avoid that terminology?) To me a "gripping hand" is intuitively something that continuously holds an item. It might require human intervention to work, such as positioning my camera onto a universal tripod mount. A "grasping hand" (or "grabbing hand") would be something that transitions from empty-handed to holding an item.
- p1esk 3y agoTool bag “valued at $100,000”? What could possibly be in there?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- munk-a 3y agoProbably just regular stuff but of a high enough quality that we'd consider sending it to space? Defense and space equipment procurement is usually a lot more expensive than normal because 1) companies exploit the bidding system 2) you really don't want a screw driver that fails when you're re-attaching a solar panel to something floating in LEO since the run to the local Lowe's is going to be quite expensive.
- GauntletWizard 3y agoNot to mention that the mere act of sending it to space costs $30,000 per pound of payload, so it was probably $10k of quality tools totaling 3lbs of weight.
- kolinko 3y agoAlso, it may include a cost of shipping to orbit.
- kube-system 3y agoAnd also, a lot of it is low volume stuff, and fixed costs in manufacturing are huge. The reason the tools you buy at the home improvement store are cheap is because the fixed costs are spread out over thousands to millions of units. Design/labor/fixturing/tooling/etc can be brutal for low volumes. If you want to build a single Lego, the tooling could cost you hundreds of thousand of dollars.
- adhesive_wombat 3y agoYou think a Lego piece is expensive, you should see the total capital outlay required to make an apple pie from scratch!
- renewiltord 3y agoIt happens now and then. I recall this happening a few decades ago. A very human video from then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vXdRUIZ_EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vXdRUIZ_EM
- soniman 3y agoI know what the historical present is but its use here is confusing. Just use "dropped." If the headline needs the present use "leave".
- 9front 3y ago[flagged]
- yieldcrv 3y ago> "The white, satchel-like tool bag slipped away from two astronauts during a rare, all-female spacewalk." Could have left that in drafts
- nerdponx 3y agoApparently the howling masses love it when a woman messes up in space. Try to hold your lunch down while reading the comments here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPV9QpC1JtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPV9QpC1JtU
- yieldcrv 3y agois it possible that today’s spacewalk was paying homage to the one in 2008?
- 9dev 3y agoOh wow, you’re right. That’s some first class misogynistic bullshit in pretty much every single comment.
- pugworthy 3y agoIt’s here too in a few subtle “wink wink” ways.
- fritzo 3y agoHonest question: are the authors tactically baiting the masses and thereby diverting attention from more difficult to answer questions like budget (at the expense of gender equality), or are they really this crude, nothing deeper? EDIT I mean are they trying to elicit responses like "more men in space" to prevent responses like "less space more healthcare"?
- dotnet00 3y agoI don't think it's either. The PR machine was screaming loudly about the astronauts' gender coming up to the spacewalk. So, it just carried over. It'd be weird to start trying to cover that up just because people might make jokes some find distasteful.
- moffkalast 3y agoKind of a shame they don't still have an MMU at the station for this kind of smash and grab job.
- KyleBerezin 3y ago"That tool bag, valued at $100,000, circled the planet for months until meeting its fiery end after plunging to Earth and disintegrating. Experts believe last week's missing tool bag will share the same fate as it hurtles in the upper atmosphere, which has become increasingly littered." That makes no sense. Its like they are saying it burning up will 'litter' the upper atmosphere. I assume they meant to say that it being in orbit as debris is the litter, but I'd doubt it will be up there long due to its altitude and density.
- PretzelPirate 3y ago> which has become increasingly littered This isn't saying that the toolbag has become litter in the upper atmosphere, but that the upper atmosphere, in general, has become littered by other things.
- advisedwang 3y agoIt's just poor sentence structure. "which has become increasingly littered" is a general statement about the upper atmosphere. It is true that litter in very low orbits is oversensationalized, though.
- fluoridation 3y agoIt's clumsily written. They combined two unrelated truths into the same sentence. It should have read > Experts believe last week's missing tool bag will share the same fate. It's currently hurtling through the upper atmosphere, which has become increasingly littered.
- huytersd 3y ago[flagged]
- poulsbohemian 3y agoMilitary officers, brilliant scientists, physically fit and operating in perhaps the most demanding environment we've asked of the human body... and all anyone remembers is they dropped the spanner.
- gumballindie 3y agoBeats combing the desert.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nerdponx 3y agoBrilliant scientists and military officers aren't necessarily also savvy with tools and "shop skills". If anything, you'd usually expect a negative association between excellence in one area and excellence in another area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox
- paulstovell 3y ago> That tool bag, valued at $100,000 Must be a Festool!
- bluffingmarconi 3y ago[dead]
- jrnichols 3y agothere seems to be a growing market for a low orbit Roomba.
- CHB0403085482 3y agoPlanetes is real? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meAYYH-DYKc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meAYYH-DYKc
- nerdponx 3y agoI love that this inevitably gets mentioned on HN literally any time space debris comes up. I found out about it because of HN, and it turned out to have been very meaningful for me. I'm very grateful for that.
- jbverschoor 3y agoAll women, and in 2008 also a woman. Maybe the thing is too heavy or too large?
- skfingngihg 3y agoMaybe we should just send up the best astronauts and screen for capability to perform good work?
- Apofis 3y agoThey however failed to create an article where I can see them on my iPhone.