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NASA astronauts lose $100,000 tool bag during spacewalk

NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli waves from a car as she departs the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building for Launch Complex 39A to board the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft for the Crew-7 mission launch, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, on August 26, 2023. The SpaceX Crew-7 mission to the International Space Station, scheduled to launch on August 26, 2023, will mark the seventh operational flight of a Crew Dragon spacecraft and the eleventh overall crewed orbital flight. (Photo by Gregg Newton / AFP) (Photo by GREGG NEWTON/AFP via Getty Images)

(NewsNation) — During a maintenance spacewalk on the first of the month, NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara were able to successfully complete one of two major objectives, but not before a tool bag worth $100,000 eluded them in space, according to NASA.

The spacewalk lasted six hours and 42 minutes and the two were able to complete one of two major objectives. Moghbeli and O’Hara replaced one of the 12 trundle bearing assemblies on the port solar alpha rotary joint, which allows the arrays to track the sun and generate electricity to power the station, the blog post said.


As time ran out, the two analyzed the second task to come up with an approach on how to tackle it for the next spacewalk when the toolbox was inadvertently lost.

“Mission Control analyzed the bag’s trajectory and determined that risk of recontacting the station is low and that the onboard crew and space station are safe with no action required,” NASA said.

Now, the tool bag is hovering about 200 miles above Earth, orbiting the planet just ahead of the International Space Station, UPI reported.