CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara embarked on their first spacewalk this month, encountering a mishap as a tool bag floated away in space.

The pair spent six hours and 42 minutes conducting maintenance work outside the International Space Station on November 1. Their tasks included work on the station’s solar arrays, which track the sun, but they were unable to complete the removal and stowing of a communications electronics box, leaving that task for a future spacewalk. Instead, they assessed how the job could be done in the future.

During the spacewalk, a tool bag escaped their grasp and was “lost,” according to NASA. However, flight controllers were able to spot it using the ISS’ external cameras. Fortunately, the tools inside the bag were not necessary for the remainder of their tasks.

The tool bag is currently orbiting Earth ahead of the ISS and may be visible from Earth with a pair of binoculars until it disintegrates in our planet’s atmosphere, according to EarthSky, a website tracking cosmic events. This incident is not the first time that astronauts have lost tools in space, with similar mishaps occurring in 2008 and 2006. It is worth noting that space debris, like the lost tool bag, can range from small chips of paint to discarded rocket parts.

As of September 2023, the European Space Agency estimated that more than 35,000 objects were being tracked and cataloged by various space surveillance networks, with the total mass of objects in Earth’s orbit exceeding 11,000 tons.

In conclusion, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara successfully completed their first spacewalk on November 1, despite a minor setback involving a lost tool bag. The incident serves as a reminder of the challenges astronauts face in the harsh environment of space.