The Tool Bag That Became a Star
During a spacewalk in 2008, an astronaut lost her tool bag. For months afterwards, people on the ground watched it glide across the night sky.
What was reported
In November 2008, during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on the Space Shuttle Endeavour's mission, a bag of tools slipped away and drifted off, after a grease gun inside it leaked. Cameras showed it floating away into the darkness.
The bag, about the size of a briefcase, stayed in orbit, slowly drifting ahead of the station. Amateur astronomers tracked it and, with binoculars, could see it sweep across the sky as a faint moving star.
Explanations offered
The bag was one of thousands of pieces of human-made debris in orbit. Being low, it slowly lost height through drag from the thin upper atmosphere, and in August 2009 it fell back and burned up. Some 'strange moving lights' reported by sky-watchers are objects like this.
- When
- November 2008 to August 2009
- Where
- In orbit, lost from the International Space Station
- Witnesses
- Astronauts on the Space Shuttle Endeavour, then sky-watchers
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.