$100,000 toolkit to urine containers: 10 strange things we've left in space

Indian Express

15 hours ago

Space is a lot messier than most people think. While we marvel at rockets and rovers, there's also a trail of misplaced gear, stranded tech, and personal items drifting above Earth. Some were lost during missions, others deliberately dumped, all of them now part of the growing problem of space debris.
In a 2008 spacewalk mishap, astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper lost a tool bag while repairing a stuck solar panel joint on the International Space Station. The briefcase-sized bag floated away after a grease gun leaked, soiling her glove, and slipped from her grasp as she cleaned up.
The bag, one of the largest ever lost in orbit, contained vital tools like grease guns and scrapers, forcing Stefanyshyn-Piper and her partner Stephen Bowen to share tools for the nearly seven-hour spacewalk. Mission plans were adjusted, though NASA said the bag posed no collision threat as it drifted away safely from the station.
America's first spacewalker, Ed White, dropped one of his gloves during the historic Gemini 4 mission in 1965. The glove floated in low-Earth orbit for nearly a month before it disintegrated upon re-entry, becoming one of the first items of accidental space debris.
The 'Snoopy' module from Apollo 10 was jettisoned and remains in an independent solar orbit. Apollo 10, a dress rehearsal for the first Moon landing, saw astronauts complete every mission phase except the final descent. After use, Snoopy was jettisoned into solar orbit, and despite amateur astronomers' attempts to track it using its 1969 coordinates, its exact location remains unknown.
In the early days of human spaceflight, astronauts routinely released urine into space, where the liquid would instantly freeze into shimmering ice crystals. While it might seem odd, this was a common method of waste disposal before the advent of advanced water recycling systems aboard the ISS.
The American flags planted on the Moon during the Apollo missions have likely faded over time, bleached by years of harsh solar radiation, but have stayed.
The tradition began with Apollo 11 in 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted the first flag on the lunar surface—a last-minute decision that went on to become one of the most iconic moments in space exploration. Every Apollo mission that followed carried its own flag to plant, continuing the symbolic gesture.
Since the Moon has no atmosphere and therefore no wind, the flags couldn't 'fly' naturally. To solve this, NASA designed them with extendable horizontal poles, allowing the flags to remain outstretched when unfurled.
One flag in particular has a special backstory: the Apollo 17 flag, planted by astronaut Gene Cernan, had already made a trip to the Moon. It was originally carried aboard Apollo 11, then displayed on the wall of Mission Control in Houston. When Apollo 17 launched, a different flag was taken to the Moon to replace it in the office, while the original returned to the lunar surface once more—completing a unique journey of patriotic symbolism.
Astronaut Sunita Williams lost her digital camera during a spacewalk in 2007 while working near the space station's solar arrays. Footage revealed that the clamp securing the camera likely failed, sending it into orbit. It eventually disintegrated upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
Earlier on the historic Apollo 11 mission, astronaut Michael Collins, piloting the Columbia command module, managed to lose a Hasselblad camera inside the cramped spacecraft — a mishap he humorously acknowledged during a radio exchange with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin while watching the sunrise from space. Collins joked about the camera floating away, calling it a 'big son of a gun,' and added that he was 'much embarrassed' to have misplaced it.
As a tribute to the creator of Star Trek, a small capsule containing Gene Roddenberry's ashes was sent into orbit aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1992. The capsule circled the Earth for a short time before re-entering the atmosphere.
A second mission in 2010 carried both Roddenberry's and his wife Majel Barrett's ashes into space.
In 2007, during a spacewalk to fix a torn solar panel, astronaut Scott Parazynski accidentally dropped a pair of needle-nose pliers. Despite their small size, even such tools are closely tracked to prevent collisions with spacecraft or satellites.
During the Apollo 16 mission in 1972, astronaut Charles Duke left behind a deeply personal memento on the Moon — a plastic-wrapped family photograph. The image showed Duke, his wife, and their two sons, with a message on the back that read: 'This is the family of astronaut Charlie Duke from planet Earth who landed on the Moon on April 20, 1972.'
At just 36 years old, Duke became the youngest person to walk on the lunar surface. Over time, exposure to intense solar radiation likely bleached the photo white, erasing the image — but not the gesture.
In 2017, veteran astronauts Peggy Whitson and Shane Kimbrough were midway through a 6.5-hour spacewalk on the International Space Station when a critical item floated away — a 5-foot-long, 8-kilogram debris shield meant to protect a docking port. Whitson, the most experienced female spacewalker at the time, reported the shield's escape to ground control.
While small objects like screws occasionally go missing during spacewalks, losing a large item like this was rare — the last time something similar happened was in 2008. NASA later confirmed the shield posed no risk to the ISS and would eventually burn up upon re-entry, joining the growing catalogue of space debris.