"Oh, It's a 'Gabang'..."...A Shining Space Object Captured with Binoculars on Earth

Astronaut's Lost Bag Drifting and Observable
Apparent Magnitude Slightly Dimmer Than Uranus at 6
Dropped Due to Astronaut's Mistake... Collision Risk Low

An astronaut accidentally dropped a tool bag while performing a mission on the International Space Station (ISS), and the bag has started orbiting the Earth. The bag is very bright and can be observed from Earth using binoculars.

A view of a tool bag photographed by Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
[Photo by X (formerly Twitter)]

According to Space.com on the 11th (local time), NASA officially announced on its blog on the 7th that astronauts Jasmine Moghbeli and Laurel O'Hara lost a tool bag while maintaining equipment on the ISS. It has been confirmed that the bag is currently orbiting the Earth about 2 to 4 minutes ahead of the ISS.

The bag's apparent magnitude (a unit measuring the brightness of stars) is about 6, slightly dimmer than Uranus. This means it is not visible to the naked eye but can be observed with binoculars. NASA's analysis indicates that the likelihood of the bag colliding with other satellites is very low.

An astronaut from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) dropping a toolbox while performing a mission on the International Space Station (ISS).
[Photo by Megan Christian, sourced from X (formerly Twitter)]

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained on X (formerly Twitter), "This bag has been officially designated as '58229/1998-067WC' in the U.S. Space Force's classification system for artificial objects in Earth orbit."

Megan Christian, a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut candidate, shared a video on her X account capturing the moment Moghbeli lost the bag. She added, "The bag was spotted floating over Mount Fuji in Japan by Satoshi Furukawa of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency."

It is unlikely that the lost bag will continue to be observed for long. According to Space.com, the bag is rapidly falling into Earth's atmosphere and is expected to burn up due to friction with the atmosphere when it reaches an altitude of about 113 km above Earth.

Meanwhile, this is not the first time an astronaut has lost an item during maintenance in space. Previously, NASA astronaut Piers Sellers lost a kitchen spatula while repairing the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2006. He was known to have said about the lost spatula, "It was my favorite spatula."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.