An unexpected object has been added to the list of man-made satellites. On November 2, 2023, during a spacewalk from the International Space Station (ISS), NASA astronauts Jasmine Mogbeli and Loral O’Hara dropped a bag of instruments that now orbits our planet with a visual magnitude of about 6.
This means that it is slightly less bright than Uranus, Space.com reports. This is not enough to see it with the naked eye, but skywatchers should be able to see it with binoculars.
To see it, you need to follow the movements of the ISS, and there is a special NASA app for this (iOS and Android). The bag should fly over the specified point on Earth two to four minutes before the station. However, the object is descending quite rapidly and will most likely disintegrate when it reaches an altitude of about 113 kilometers above the Earth.
European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Megan Christian shared footage of the moment when the bag of tools was torn from Mogbeli’s hands. She added that the last time the bag was seen was by Satoshi Furukawa, an astronaut on Crew 7, over Mount Fuji.
Last seen by @Astro_Satoshi while floating over Mount Fuji 🗻 the ‘Orbital Police’ can confirm that the lost EVA gear is being tracked https://t.co/wz4MITmA fM pic.twitter.com/eksfu9fPFw
– Dr. Meganne Christian (@astro_meganne) November 5, 2023
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics (CfA), said that the bag orbits the Earth in an orbit of approximately 415 by 416 kilometers. The object was designated 58229/1998-067WC in the US Space Force catalog of artificial objects in orbit.
This bag joined a huge amount of man-made space debris in orbit around the Earth, from shuttle debris and broken satellites to instruments used by astronauts. This is not even the first tool bag to reach orbit. In 2008, a NASA astronaut with Ukrainian roots, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, was trying to fix a jammed mechanism on the ISS solar panel and lost control of another bag of instruments.
