What happens when astronauts drop their tools into space – Tech

Extract audio recordings of Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt at their first moonwalk in 1972:

123: 42: 22 Schmitt: Agreement. [Pause] I did not want to drop that, but I did

123: 42: 31 Cernan: Yes, we must avoid dropping everything. I will tell you, the great lesson today …

123: 42: 35 Schmitt: [Garbled]

123: 42: 36 Cernan: Dust, I suppose.

123: 42:38 Schmitt: The big lesson is that it will fall if your hands are tired.

To get a human into space (alive), you have to wrap them in a cocoon of pressurized air so that they can breathe without boiling.

Perhaps the most difficult part of spatial design is the glove, where engineers have to create a design rigid enough to maintain pressure, but flexible enough to bend across the entire range of motion in the fingers and wrist. Naturally, they do not succeed – the glove used by NASA astronauts working in space suits today limits them to about 20% of their range of motion, according to Ted Southern, a designer of space suits who works with l & # 39; agency. CENTER, FLA. – Astronaut John Herrington (right) helps Norm Abram to try a toolholder used in the space. Abram is the master carpenter of television. "This Old House." He is at KSC to film an episode of the series "scale =" 0 "sizes =" (max-width: 320px) 320px, 640px "src =" https://qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/ 06 / astronaut-glove-Norm-Abram-This-Old-House.jpg? Quality = 80 & strip = all & w = 1758 "srcset =" https://qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/astronaut-glove -Norm-Abram-This-Old-House.jpg? Quality = 80 & strip = all & w = 320 320w, https://qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/astronaut-glove-Norm-Abram-This- Old-House.jpg? Quality = 80 & strip = all & w = 640 640w, https://qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/astronaut-glove-Norm-Abram-This-Old-House.jpg?quality = 80 & strip = all & w = 940 940w, https://qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/astronaut-glove-Norm-Abram-This-Old-House.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600 1600w , https://qz.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/astronaut-glove-Norm-Abram-This-Old-House.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=3200 3200w "/>

This makes working with these gloves exhausting and dropping things unavoidable. You do almost all your work with your hands, "says Scott Wray, who works at NASA and helps astronauts plan and execute space walks on the International Space Station. Unlike lunar expeditions, where astronauts could walk, space workers today use their hands to navigate the ISS even when they are working. This can be a problem because when you drop something into orbit, it does not fall – but it can quickly drift out of range.

"If I drop a hammer on a spacewalk, ninety minutes later with me or the space station, causing damage," says Wray, referring to the time it takes the space lab to orbit around the land at over 17,500 miles per hour. "So, it's a serious matter.If [astronauts] drops something, we want it to report mbad, speed, direction of travel, tool dimensions." We have a group of experts who work with the DOD and follow these objects into orbit.

All that astronauts lose control in space becomes their own satellite. The astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell, who maintains databases of launches and satellites in orbit, recorded the following fallen objects that were clbadified as satellites:

Yes, it is a spatula in 2006 After a damaged heat shield led the Columbia Space Shuttle to disintegrate on its return, NASA experimented with ways to repair broken thermal tiles in orbit, which included tests that simulated the injection of various "goos" in the tile and spread them out with a kind of spatu "When [Sellers] returned after the mission, he had many spatulas waiting in his office for his fellow astronauts," recalls Wray.

During an outing in space in June 2018, astronaut Drew Feustel lost tie, used to secure bundles of wires outside the station, while installing new cameras outside the station.

You can see Feustel and his colleague Ricky Arnold at work in this video. You can see them check their gloves and helmets, attach wire bundles and move their tools very carefully through the station. (You do not see them losing the link.)

Of course, NASA spends a lot of time not dropping things. Each tool is attached to a clip that should be connected to a suit or station at all times: Wray says that astronauts learn a protocol called "do it before breaking", to remember to hook each tool before They do not lose contact with him. But during an outing in the space of six hours, the concentration can be interrupted, especially when all these cables float in microgravity and collide in your toolbox.

"I also suggest the most efficient tool setup," says Wray. "The best way to reduce the risk of losing a tool is to reduce the number of tools on an output in the # 39, space, but you never know if you will need a lever or an additional torque wrench in case you would encounter something nominal. "

The good news when it s 39; is lost objects in low Earth orbit, about 250 miles (402 kilometers) above the Earth, that is, the closest drift into the atmosphere and burns. The most important thing is to avoid short-term damage to the space station.

"Ideally, if a crew member were to drop something, we would like him to move towards the nadir towards the ground and backwards, his descending orbit would be lower than the space station, "says Wray. "If it went to the zenith, in a way, you're kind of pushing into a higher orbit and perhaps a higher velocity, its next orbit could collide."

Fortunately, the ISS is equipped to increase its rocket engine altitude on the Russian module, what it does to maintain altitude and avoid orbital debris, which they are created by astronauts or by someone else.