Showing posts with label EVA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EVA. Show all posts

Monday, 3 April 2017

The ISS Fabric Shield accidentally released from the ISS imaged in orbit

On March 30, 2017, NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson conducted an EVA from the International Space Station to prepare a new docking port and install new equipment on the outside of the ISS.

click to enlarge

During this spacewalk, they accidentally released a 1.5 x 0.6 meter large protective Fabric Shield, a shield against micrometeoroids that was one of four to have been installed that day on one of Tranqility module's ports. Somehow it got loose  and floated away in space, before the astronauts were able to retrieve it. Oopsy!

Once floating free in space, and having become space debris, it was catalogued by JSpOC as object nr. 42434, 1998-067LF.

The image above shows the shield, imaged from Leiden last night during a zenith pass with an 1.4/85 mm lens. It is faint and was almost exactly a minute in front of the ISS. It seemed steady in brightness on the 3 images I obtained (spanning an arc of 15 seconds in time).

Here is a screencap of the moment the object floated away during the EVA, somehow having come loose of its tether:


click to enlarge

The image below shows the ISS, a minute later (bright stars are kappa and iota UMa):


The accidentally released Fabric Shield has a relatively large surface relative to its weight [added edit: it weights 8 kg and measures 1.5 x 0.6 meter], which means it will quickly decay and re-enter, probably within 5 to 6 months from now.

Wednesday, 28 January 2009

Observed the flying toolbag

This evening it was clear. Besides photographing the passes of Lacrosse 4 (00-047A) and the NOSS 3-1 duo (01-040A & C), I watched a nice ISS pass together with my neighbour and for the very first time also managed to see the ISS tool bag (98 067BL), the bag with tools lost in space by an astronaut during an ISS EVA in november 2008.

The latter observation was made with my Meade ETX-70 (7 cm refractor) at 13.5x magnification (field-of-view about 4 degrees) during a near-zenith pass at 18:03 UTC (27 Jan), when the object passed close to Algol.

It was faint (mag. +7 to +8) and very fast, zipping through the field of view being gone before you knew it. I had some impression of a slow brightness variation.

It was very nice to finally see it, after a few earlier failed attempts.

Video of the astronaut loosing the toolbag....