Science and technology

International Space Station

Space waste: after the spacewalk astronauts throw away objects no longer needed

The bag weighing 5kg will disintegrate without consequences when it re-enters the atmosphere

04/05/2023

At the end of the third spacewalk of Expedition 69, dedicated to moving the experiment airlock from the Rassvet module to the Nauka multipurpose laboratory module of the International Space Station, Russian cosmonauts Prokopyev and Petelin released a bag containing objects and instruments no longer needed, along with some other elements discarded from previous spacewalks. The bag, weighing about 5 kilograms, will float behind the orbiting station for some time before disintegrating without consequences upon re-entry into the atmosphere.