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Dropped Shuttle Toolbag Filmed From Earth
cathector writes "An article at spaceweather.com reports that the toolbag dropped during Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper's spacewalk has been recorded on film from earth: 'When Endeavour astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper dropped her toolbag during a spacewalk on Nov. 18th and it floated away, mission controllers probably figured they'd seen the last of it. Think again. Last night, Nov. 22nd, veteran satellite observer Kevin Fetter video-recorded the backpack-sized bag gliding over his backyard observatory in Brockville, Ontario. "It was easily 8th magnitude or brighter as it passed by the 4th magnitude star eta Pisces," he says. Spaceweather's satellite tracker is monitoring the toolbag.'"
The actual loss of the bag was filmed, too; reader Kagura links in a comment on the original story to this YouTube clip of the bag's escape.
Timestamp 1: Witnesses as far as 720 kilometers apart reported seeing what looked like a bright meteor falling somewhere on the Saskatchewan-Alberta boundary around 5:30 pm MT Thursday, according to the CBC.
Timestamp 2: Last night, Nov. 22nd, veteran satellite observer Kevin Fetter video-recorded the backpack-sized bag gliding over his backyard observatory in Brockville, Ontario.
So, no.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6QUPZKBRt0
The statement "Lord, please don't let me fuck this up" was originally referred to as "The Shepard's Prayer", after the first US astronaut, Alan Shepard. He reportedly "recited" it while on the pad awaiting his Mercury flight, not knowing that his mike was hot, and everyone in launch control was listening in.
Shepard also ended up having to pee in his spacesuit on the pad, because the engineers hadn't considered the effects of having a man lying on his back with his legs elevated for several hours before launch.
The glory days of manned spaceflight...:)
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I think you are wrong.
I know I'm not. I've calculated stuff like this before.
The velocity relative to the ISS is a few metres per second at the most.
You'd be surprised how difficult it is to catch up even in those orders of magnitude.
Orbital maneuvering is hard, and very unintutive. NASA had to learn this the hard way:
The early rendez-vous missions assumed it would be possible to fly manual visual approaches once the
target is in sight. Didn't work. Maneuvering out-of-plane is also energetically very expensive.
Because it got a single impulse it will keep coming back once an orbit.
True, the orbits intersect in space. But not in time, due to different excentricity.
The shuttle/ISS will not be at the section point the next time the bag comes along.
I don't think catching it with the shuttle on this mission is impossible.
If the orbital periods have a common integer multiple (unlikely), they could wait and try a very risky
catch-the-bag EVA (exactly one chance) - but they will probably run out of time, air and other
supplies before this would be possible even then.
Just accept it: It's impossible.
Mostly, they do.
From http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/pdf/educator-ecosystem_edu.pdf
In orbit portions of the ISS will be exposed to direct sunlight 16 times per Earth day.
Temperatures on these occasions can climb to over 120 degrees Celsius. The ISS will
also be exposed to complete darkness or lack of radiant energy. Temperatures can
plummet to -100 degrees Celsius. Thus, the internal environment of both spacecraft
and space suit, developed for extravehicular activity, must have an active temperature
regulation system that maintains a narrow range of thermal comfort.