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In the Race
Now, here, you see, it takes all the blogging I can do to keep in the same place. If I want to get somewhere else, I must blog twice as fast as that! You see, I'm in the Red Queen's Race...
An Old Bag and Shine On
By Janet Evans
Saturday, Nov 29 2008, 09:21 AM
 An extravehicular activity (EVA) tool bag drifts away from the International Space Station during the
mission's first scheduled spacewalk for STS-126. Credit: NASA
We've all heard that every item used in the Space program has a huge price mark up, haven't we? And then there's the price of a toilet for the space station; $15 million? Well, when you've gotta go, you've gotta go. Plus, we don't want surprises floating around in space like that tool bag that recently was lost in space. That tool bag, which is now an old bag, cost $100,000. Well, I'm all for the space program to continue; especially now that we've sat for 40 years and let everyone else start catching up to us. It's just that there are some people somewhere making an awful lot of big bucks out there, and I know it isn't my son, who is an aerospace engineer. It's kind of like when you're in the hospital and they won't let you take your regular medications from home. You later find out that the same pill that costs $1dollar costs $8 dollars a day in the hospital. But I digress.
That “old bag” tool bag? There’s a lot of space junk flying around this planet. But that shiny tool bag isn't as lost as we may have thought it was.
I've always been interested in space, and there are many space enthusiasts out there, young and old. They've been tracking the tool bag since it left the space station.
"After sunset on Nov. 22, Edward Light, using 10 x 50 binoculars, spotted the bag in space while he scanned the sky from his backyard in Lakewood, N.J., Spaceweather.com reported. On the same night, Keven Fetter of Brockville, Ontario, video-recorded the bag as it passed by the star Eta Pisces in the constellation Pisces.
More bag-viewing opportunities are expected.
The tool bag can be seen through binoculars, a few minutes ahead of the space station's orbit. The satellite tracker predicts that the bag will be visible through binoculars from Europe and western North America during a series of passes this week. By late next week, the tool bag should appear in the evening skies over most of North America.
Like other space debris, the tool bag's show will have a fiery end. "We currently predict that the errant tool bag will fall back to Earth in June of next year," said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The date is dependent upon solar activity, so an earlier or later date is possible. As the reentry date draws nearer, a more accurate prediction can be made."
Read the complete article at Space.com HERE (scroll to bottom of page)
There's more exciting space news and it has to do with shining planets! This Monday, December 1st, look into southwest night sky and you will be able to see the moon, Venus and Jupiter shining brightly...but use your binoculars for a better view.
Look to the southwest after sunset on Dec. 1 for a close conjunction between three bright solar
system objects: the moon, Venus and Jupiter. If you have binoculars, you might even be able
to fit all three of them in the field of view. Between now and then, you can see Jupiter and Venus
getting closer together each evening.
Read all about it on msnbc HERE
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