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Nasa astronauts accidently drop toolbox during spacewalk

nasa-astronauts.Image source, NASA
Image caption,

Oops! Two astroanuts accidently lost a toolbag - that is now floating away in space

Two Nasa astronauts accidently lost their toolbox during a spacewalk.

Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara went on a spacewalk on 2 November to carry out some scheduled maintenance and checks of the International Space Station (ISS).

The pair spent six hours and 42 minutes in space, but after a few hours they noticed that their toolbox had accidently floated away!

"During the activity, one tool bag was inadvertently lost. Flight controllers spotted the tool bag using external station cameras," said Nasa.

Nasa also said that luckily the tools were not actually needed for the rest of the mission.

What will happen to the missing toolbox now?

Image source, Satoshi Furukawa/Nasa
Image caption,

Astronaut Satoshi Furukawa captured this picture of the toolbag floating away whilst on board the ISS.

The tool bag is being monitored by Nasa, and engineers have worked out that it is very unlikely the tool bag will come back to hit the space station on it's travels through space.

"Mission Control analysed the bag's trajectory and determined that risk of recontacting the station is low and that the on-board crew and space station are safe with no action required," Nasa said.

But the toolbox will not be stuck in space forever, scientists have worked out that the toolbox will eventually burn up in the Earth's atmosphere as it gets closer to our planet in the next few months.

Image source, NASA
Image caption,

The tool bag can now be spotted from the Earth using binoculars!

Believe it or not, this isn't the first time an astronaut has lost a toolbox - in November 2008, astronaut Heide Stefanyshyn-Piper was doing a similar task, when the same thing happened to her too!

The toolbag has now been classified as 'space junk', and given its own unique number 58229 / 1998-067WC to be logged by the US space force.

Scientists think there are around 100,000 space junk items currently circling the Earth.