Ah, the old “Star Mangled Spanner”.
Here’s a link to a video with the astronaut discussing the mishap not on that site once known as something or other:
I had a paintball friend who worked at an aluminum smelting plant as an electrician and he had some super fancy Fluke multi-meter for diagnosing some issues with electronically controlled paintball markers.
Also Fluke multi-meters made it harder to find info on Fluke the band back in the day.
Just to be clear, that’s a different astronaut and different lost tool bag—that one happened in 2008.
Quite right-sorry for the confusion!
Until the station does an orbit adjustment, won’t the tool bag’s orbit keep intersecting the station?
I suppose you could only find it by an incredible stroke of luck.
OH sure, but my luck has to change SOMETIME right?
So this is a common occurrence?
partially probably this:
the space station is at about 413-422km, and everything in leo experiences drag ( despite gop legislation to the contrary )
also, it had some push away from the iss so maybe even without drag a differently timed elliptical path would probably miss on the way back around
In the absence of drag and assuming a uniform gravitational field (which it isn’t) the bag would come back around in its orbit to rendezvous with the ISS. Fun facts!
Its orbit should intersect the station’s twice per orbit, but it might do something annoying like pass slightly in front and then slightly behind. Still, it won’t take long for even micro-gravity forces (drag, solar wind, light pressure, magnetic fields, etc) to diverge them.
Prepare the grappler!
I suppose it could take out an alien attack corvette
What goes up must come down.
Astronaut’s Mom:
“Just don’t go expecting me to make you another packed lunch, young lady.”
probably
“… can I reach and get it? And then I thought that would probably just make things worse…”
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