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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.
Exactly what I said as I dropped a bolt today and it rolled away under the car. :-)
I suppose something of this incident will go down in history and become the origin of some common expression like Murphy's Law in the distant future. Maybe feature in a future episode of Star Trek?
It probably would be cheaper just to have the astronauts make sure the bag is continually tethered to something.
Well, a woman dropped an expensive toolbag. An organisation comprised predominantly of men oversaw the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia...
If you're keeping score, I think women might be in the lead for some time yet ;)
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
NASA funniest home videos?
Seriously though, I feel sorry for this woman. One minor slip up and because the media latched onto it this is all she'll ever be remembered for. NASA astronauts risk life and limb and while the humour's good we shouldn't forget the effort and sacrifice they make should not be dismissed lightly.
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Let's put aside any blame, mistakes, whether the media is being unfair...for just a moment.
Seeing that bag just drift off, only a few feet away from the station and then a few days later we see it pass by in orbit from Earth is just amazing. I'm always impressed with whatever we do in space.
Was it my tax dollars that paid for that lost bag? Still worth the money.
She fumbled, in a high-stress enviroment under high-stress circumstances, but it's not her fault. I actually instantly saw the flaw with something/somebody else when I read this the first time.
what in heavens name is up with a space grease gun leaking grease were it's not supposed to? Were does Nasa get these? At the local hardware store for 10 Dollars a piece or what? This stunt actually went quite well. Imagine her not being able to do her job (or get back to the airlock) because a grease gun explodes all over her helmet visor or something simular.
Say what you want, but somewhere some Nasa engineering team has to get back to the drawing table ASAP and design a greasegun that actually works relyably - Nasa style wise. Or something simular with no moving parts at all. Maybe get a vaseline can and a spatula tied to a string or something - that's probably how the russians do it.
I'd actually be super-pissed at gear that goes haywire on me 7 hours into a stressy EVA. I do climbing - imagine your backback shedding mission-critical gear at 300 meters in the vertical or something simular. Multipling that by a thousand hints the scale of issues we're talking about.
Way more people than just the astronaut are responsible here.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Your first mistake was reading the comments on a Youtube video.
I wonder, will she catch any flak for this? Does she get docked salary for letting it slip?
More importantly, why wasn't this extremely expensive bag tethered to something? If it can't be tethered to her for safety reasons, how about a magnetically secured line attached to the work surface?
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