I’ve been getting email and comments on an earlier post wondering if the Canadian fireball seen on Thursday were actually the toolbag lost earlier this week by a spacewalking astronaut on the International Space Station. I’ve seen this question pop up elsewhere as well.
I can say unequivocally that the answer is no, because it takes months or years for objects at the ISS’s height to have their orbits decay and burn up in our atmosphere.
But now I have proof! Over at Universe Today, they link to a video of the toolbag caught in orbit by an amateur astronomer! The video was captured on November 22, two days after the bright Canadian fireball.
So the tool bag is still up there, and will be for quite some time. Looks like some people have fallen victim to the famous logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc, which means "after this, therefore because of this". The fireball occurred after the toolbag was lost, so therefore it was the toolbag that was lost. But now we know that’s not true.
Remember, even if two unlikely events happen around the same time, they’re not necessarily related!
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:29 pm
@Phil
Would the toolbag even be big enough to make such a show? Wouldn’t this object had to have been the size of bed at least? It’s always amazing how big meteoroids have to be at the beginning just to end up as small meteorites. It’s like making beef jerky, but with rocks.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Have any idea of what was it, or was just some random rocks?
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Yes, it would be — I posted a pic of it on my blog (and a link to the movie from Spaceweather.com) and you can see that it’s pretty bright. Also, there’s an ephemeris for it now if you want to track it — the link is at Spaceweather.com (as Phil put above). Right now both pages are getting slammed with hits…
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
ROFL, some people are really funny.
The webpage with the video seems to be down?
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Are you sure you have the right link? Nothing is loading for me.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
I have two questions, what’s the size of the toolbox and the size of the “Canadian fireball” object?
Oh, and it’s kind of weird that there’s so many fireball sightings lately, it’s the aliens! I knew it!
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:12 pm
I gotta memorize this phrase:
“POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC”.
Latin = an undeniable philosophical argument.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:19 pm
@ Sir Struggle
That just makes we want to throw mattresses out of the ISS airlock to test that hypothesis.
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Elmar_M is right, the video page won’t load!
Dang! I wanna seeeee! Sounds cute. 
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Why would someone have a mattress on the ISS? Don’t they just float when they sleep? Well, I guess that is why they could afford to throw them out – right?
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:34 pm
I hear the page is getting slammed, so it may take a few tries. You might want to wait a few days and try again, too.
November 23rd, 2008 at 7:50 pm
For some stupid reason I found the video really funny. I guess it’s the absurdity of not only dropping your tool bag and watching it float away, but also having people watching it fly around the earth in circles.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
When I first read the title of this post I thought that someone had suggested that the Canadian fireball was in fact the ISS that had fallen from the sky and that you were insulting them by calling them a toolbag.
This was not the case.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Why would the toolbag float away? Wouldn’t it continue traveling at the same relative speed? (Hopefully not too stupid a question!)
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Oh come now, everyone knows it couldn’t have been the ISS toolkit, because We Never Went to the Moon! which of course implies that the ISS doesn’t really exist either.
All those fake pictures all those so-called amateur astronomers are posting are just part of the conspiracy! (/joke)
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Michael
I would guess that it is pretty easy for an astronaut to impart some small velocity change to an object like that – just give it a little push, and then once it is out of reach that small relative velocity will just keep it slowly moving away. Presumably the toolbag is still in a pretty similar orbit to the ISS (I haven’t checked) and will be until the ISS is boosted again or the effect of what atmosphere is left at that altitude makes a significant difference – as Phil said this would be months or years.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 pm
@Michael L:
Different drag characteristics will do it, more rapidly than you might think. Mass and drag have a roughly cube/square relationship, so things of the same density but different sizes behave quite differently. Although the ISS is relatively fluffy it still ends up having a higher ballistic coefficient than almost any small item. Furthermore, the process accelerates, because the item with more drag will go lower, and so experience even more drag.
However in this case, there’s a another reason they didn’t stay together: The ISS got a re-boost from the shuttle after the bag was lost (to set up for the next progress docking, not related to the loss of the bag!)
FWIW, the bag will not make a light show remotely close to what was seen over Canada. There’s video of things like the ATV and discarded Soyuz modules burning up, and they aren’t nearly as bright as that fireball was. How much that’s related to type and quantity of material, and how much is related to velocity isn’t clear to me, but it’s pretty clear few kg in a toolbag is going to be a lot less than an ATV burning up.
FWIW2: you can track the bag here:http://www.n2yo.com/?s=33442
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Mike D,
I thought the same thing. I was wondering why Phil was calling someone toolbag, and I wanted to see the blog post where that person suggested it was the ISS falling to earth. I guess I was wrong, too.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 pm
@earthandbeyond:-
Lol, that is too funny. This article now takes on a whole new meaning
Phil, please put a comma after “ISS”, that would be superb.
I’m shocked the toolbag can be observed at 8th magnitude… I need to get into this practical astronomy thing, that is too cool.
Cheers, Ian
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:18 pm
[...] Phil Plait just call someone a toolbag? That was my first thought when I read the title of this post, “Canadian fireball was NOT the ISS toolbag” at Bad Astronomy. My brain wasn’t [...]
November 24th, 2008 at 12:18 am
How did they know that the amateur video was of the tool bag? Did it just happen to be in the right place at the right time? How can they be sure it wasn’t some other piece of debris?
- Jack
November 24th, 2008 at 12:19 am
“Phil, please put a comma after “ISS”, that would be superb.”
why?
November 24th, 2008 at 12:21 am
@Jack Hagerty
I believe you’re able to calculate the trajectory. The Spaceweather website can tell you what direction and time to look at based on your zip code.
November 24th, 2008 at 12:52 am
I’m just one more BABlogger who thought that “toolbag” was a derogatory term and that there should have been a comma after “ISS” in the headline.
November 24th, 2008 at 1:22 am
I do have a question about that video of the tool bag. How exactly do we know that it is, in fact, the lost tool bag? I mean, it’s only point of light in the video that moves across the sky. I imagine it’s too small and moving too fast to actually get a picture of it that clearly identifies it as a tool bag. So how do we know that the point of light on that video was the tool bag?
You could probably take that video and tell me that it’s a meteor or a satellite and I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference… well, I guess the tool bag technically is a satellite at the moment, but you get my point.
November 24th, 2008 at 1:26 am
So this is turning into a reading comprehension self test now? Well, I passed! >:O
November 24th, 2008 at 1:28 am
I suppose they calculated the trajectory of the bag, and found it exactly where it was supposed to be, with the exact predicted speed and direction.
Or maybe they just jumped up, opened it, and found that it was full of tools. B)
November 24th, 2008 at 2:36 am
Anyone remember SuitSat? It was an old Russian Orlan spacesuit with a radio transmitter mounted on its helmet that was pushed out by the ISS crew on Feb 3, 2006.
Suitsat remained in Earth orbit until it eventually re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere on 7 September, 2006, at 16:00 GMT, over the Southern Ocean at 110.4° East latitude and 46.3°South longitude. It was over a point some 1400 km south-southwest of Cape Leeuwin (Augusta), Western Australia.
November 24th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Ah yes. Carl Jungs synchronicity.One more way the universe mess with your mind,,,and those danged Latins even have a phrase to cover it,,,Well, I guess when your culture is 2500 years old, you have a lot of sayings accumulated. Like Chinese sayings,,,”Woman who drop tool bag in orbit can never retrieve car keys,,,”
Excellant point about the Soyuz module. I saw one of those re-enter and it was not nearly as entertaining as the Canadian meteor.
I wonder if it just did a grazing entry, like the one over Montana a few decades ago?
Would be cool if we find some remants.
GAry 7
November 24th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
‘Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.’
November 24th, 2008 at 5:06 am
Q.: “How exactly do we know that it is, in fact, the lost tool bag?”
A.: Because an accurate orbit is known for the toolbag (it is being tracked since it was lost by SSC), and the time and position of the object in the video match it.
R: “There’s video of things like the ATV and discarded Soyuz modules burning up, and they aren’t nearly as bright as that fireball was. How much that’s related to type and quantity of material, and how much is related to velocity isn’t clear to me”.
A.: Most of it is due to velocity. Meteors have a velocity of at least 11 km/s, and usually much more than that (up to 70 km/s). A slow fireball like the Saskatchewan one will probably be in the 15-20 km/s range. Re-entering space debris has a velocity of 7 km/s. Remember that energy = m * v^2 so the velocity counts ^2. In addition, most spacecraft are not solid while meteors are, hence the mass is less for a given size than for a similar meteoroid.
At the time of the Saskatchewan fireball, the ISS lost toolbag was actually nowhere near Canada: it was passing over the Himalaya region in Asia.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Also: we can expect the toolkit to decay somewhere in the late summer of next year.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:09 am
not doubting the training as I am sure there is a reason, but why not some good old dummy cord? doesnt seem like the relative velocity change would yank her off the the station or anything. just a thought from watching the video and knowing the astronaut is a fellow navy diver. haha made me chuckle a little inside as It looks a lot like a bad day losing something to the depths and knowing you cant dive after it.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Heavens-above.com is a really useful website for satellite spotters. It has a huge database of towns/villages all around the globe, so you can select your location and then Heavens-above tells you what will be visible and at what time.
http://www.heavens-above.com
Also check out the satellite trackers’ own list, where they discuss recent sightings (including Kevin Fetter who video’d the toolbag). Click my name to go there.
Bob(Big)
November 24th, 2008 at 9:04 am
Great use of a Latin idiom!
Post hoc ergo propter hoc is one of my faves.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Freiddie:
You’ve obviously never watched The West Wing
( I hope that like shows up correctly
)
November 24th, 2008 at 9:14 am
BA:
I guess too many people grew up with Star Trek? Shut down the engines? Sorry, you only have 90 minutes before you burn up in the atmosphere. Oh, and it takes 2 hours to restart the engines.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:16 am
And, if I could only spell “link” properly in my 2nd-previous post.
No, I’m not using Valley-speak.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:54 am
This made me think of the Japanese sci-fi show Planates which is about a crew of astronauts whose job is cleaning junk like this toolbag out of orbits so as to not cause disasterous collisions. If you guys haven’t checked it out I highly reccomend it. The science is fantastic. Download the fansubs though, the commercial translation sucks ass.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
@Reed:
Drag? Did Reed say “drag”? How much drag is there in space? Maybe if they had really, really big control surfaces they wouldn’t need the thrusters?
November 24th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Quote John:
“Drag? Did Reed say “drag”? How much drag is there in space? Maybe if they had really, really big control surfaces they wouldn’t need the thrusters?”
Low Earth Orbit isn’t exactly vacuum: the earth’s atmosphere has no sharp limits, and some drag is still existent at the altitude were are speaking of. That is what makes things come down again, like the toolbag eventually, or recently the EAS jettisoned from the ISS in 2007. It is also why the ISS needs a frequent boost of the orbit.
About the control surface: some believe a mechanism of this kind is used to keep the US Navy’s NOSS surveillance satellite duo’s and trio’s in formation (NOSS satellites fly in a close formation of 2 or 3: really cool to see).
November 24th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
They should just send out a space pod to retrieve it. That’s if HAL will let them in afterwards.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
@John:
At ISS altitude, there is quite a bit. ISS needs frequent reboosts to avoid doing a skylab. See http://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx?lat=0&lng=0&loc=Unspecified&alt=0&tz=CET for a chart of the last 12 months. The atmosphere also varies a great deal at that altitude, depending on solar activity.
ISS does have to consider the toque induced by aerodynamic drag (and other things) See http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/feedback/expert/answer/mcc/sts-111/06_11_05_54_20.html for example.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
For perspective, shortly after Hubble was launched in the early 90’s, it was near solar maximum and thus Earth’s atmosphere was swelled up a bit. Hubble at one point was dropping out of orbit at a rate of roughly 1 km/month. And at nearly 600 km, it’s a lot higher than ISS (at 350 km).
November 25th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC
Bartlett: When did we lose Texas CJ?
CJ: When you learned to speack ancient latin Mr President?
Bartlett: Go figure.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Aw! Ken beat me to it.
That’ll teach me to post without reading
November 26th, 2008 at 10:03 am
[...] becoming a follower of the Bad Astronomer. He’s good at nipping such nonsense in the bud stage. BA Blog: Canadian fireball was NOT the ISS toolbag [...]
December 20th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Obama Using Toolbag To Smack NASA
“This tool bag is turning out to be for NASA what the $400 hammer was to Pentagon as a symbol of insane overspending by a government agency.”
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/12/obama_team_scrubs_nasa_expense.html