If you own a pair of binoculars or a small telescope, there’s a chance to see something very odd passing over London next week – a bag that’s been lost in space.
The dropped toolbag (c) NASA/JSC
Earlier this month, a maintenance spacewalk on the International Space Station had an accident. One of the NASA astronauts’ tool bags was lost overboard and is now orbiting the earth just in front of the space station. As space debris can be a serious hazard, it’s being tracked and given a tracking ID of 58229 / 1998-067WC.
And that means you can tell when it’s flying over London – which will happen a few times next week.
It’s small enough that it can’t be seen with the naked eye — unlike the space station, which is very noticeable — but if you have some binoculars or even a small telescope, then you should be able to spot it. It’ll just be a very small fast-moving bright dot in the sky, but how often do you get a chance to see a workman’s bag flying over your head some 260 miles up into space?
The bag appears to be about 40 minutes ahead of the space station, so even if you can’t see the lost bag, you could go and look for the space station instead, which isn’t at its brightest next week, but should still be visible.
Tips for viewing the space station bag
Find a dark area, a local park away from street lights, or if you live in a block of flats facing west, being above the street lights is usually sufficient.
A few minutes before the bag and space station are due to fly over, start looking at the night sky to let your eyes acclimatise to the darkness, and then look for a solitary fast-moving star racing towards you.
Spotting it can take a while, but it becomes very obvious once you have it.
The principle is the same for the bag – although it’s ahead of the space station, and you’ll have to scan around a bit with your binoculars to spot it as it’s fainter.
It looks likely that next Tuesday (28th Nov) and Thursday (30th Nov) are the best as there will be two passes over London, so if you miss one, then there will be a second flypast about 90 minutes later.
I tend to use N2YO for tracking space objects to see if/when they will fly over London – so this page is for the space station, and this page is for the lost bag. Check that the tracker is set for your location to show the correct flypast times.
According to EarthSky, the toolbag will progressively descend into the atmosphere and should burn up harmlessly around March 2024.
Leave a Reply