American women who went into outer space lost their bag with tools: it will burn in March

The lost white backpack can be seen from Earth even with binoculars

American astronauts who went into outer space lost some of their property. And now the astronaut’s tool bag, lost in space, is revolving around the Earth.

Skywatchers have a new space object to train their eyes on: a bag of tools that is now floating in space around the Earth, writes The Guardian.

NASA astronauts Jasmine Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara were performing a rare spacewalk for women outside the International Space Station (ISS) on November 1 when their tool bag slipped from their hands, according to NASA.

The female astronauts, both on their first spacewalks, were repairing components that allow the ISS’s solar panels to continuously track the sun, reports SciTechDaily, which documented the spacewalk.

“During the operation, one bag of instruments was accidentally lost. Dispatchers spotted the tool bag using external station cameras. The instruments were not needed until the end of the spacewalk. Mission Control analyzed the bag’s flight path and determined that the risk of re-contact with the station was low and that the crew on board and the space station were safe, no action was required,” NASA said in a blog post.

The white backpack-like bag is surprisingly bright, shining just below the limit of naked eye visibility, meaning observers would be able to spot it with binoculars, EarthSky reports. Its visual magnitude is about 6, making it slightly less luminous than the ice giant Uranus.

To track the bag, observers need only locate the ISS, which NASA says is the third brightest object in the night sky and can be detected using the agency’s Spot the Station instrument. The bag will be in Earth orbit two to four minutes ahead of the ISS.

The bag was spotted floating above Mount Fuji last week by Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa.

Astronaut Megan Christian confirmed that the bag was being monitored, The Guardian notes.

Lost space gear must remain in orbit for months before quickly descending to meet its doom in the fiery inferno that is Earth’s atmosphere, The Guardian writes. According to EarthSky, preliminary estimates indicate that the tool bag should return to the atmosphere around March 2024.

This isn’t the first time an object has been lost in space, or even the first time a tool bag has been lost. In 2008, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper watched as her bag flew off while trying to repair a damaged part on the ISS. The loss of the bag forced mission controllers to change plans for the remaining spacewalks scheduled during the shuttle Endeavor’s flight.

And in 2006, late astronaut Pierce Sellers lost his shoulder blade in the depths of space while testing heat shield repair technology, according to Space.com. Sellers, who used the tool to apply a sticky heat-protective compound to damaged specimens, lamented the loss at the time: “This was my favorite spatula… Don’t tell the other spatulas.”