Astronauts also have to throw out garbage, but at the ISS orbital base it is a little more difficult than in a residential complex. The whole action required a spacewalk and a professional pack toss.
Recently, one of the astronauts who are on the ISS got a difficult task… to throw out the trash. Of course, this is not a walk in slippers to a garbage gazebo, but a whole operation that could potentially end very badly.
Throwing garbage on the ISS - this was done by astronauts in outer space
On the May weekend, two cosmonauts - Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitry Petlin - made another spacewalk. The purpose of leaving the International Space Station was to move the experimental gateway from the Rassvet module to the science laboratory module. And if they come out anyway… they can throw rubbish along the way.
During a NASA live broadcast, Prokofiev was seen wrestling with a rather large bag of old equipment that is now useless to the scientists on board. The garbage weighed a good 5 kilograms, but of course, in microgravity, the problem was not weight, but size.
Space junk can be dangerous
The astronaut had to throw the package quite accurately, because, despite everything, it is not so easy. A badly thrown sack could remain in orbit, creating yet another dot on the vast map of space debris in our orbit. In the worst case, the bag can even crash into the ISS base, causing significant damage.
So, Prokofiev hurled the packet behind him at a speed of at least 2 inches per second (about 0.2 km/h) and in a direction that hit a 30-degree cone exactly opposite to that of the space station.
Thanks to this, the bag began to slowly move towards … the Earth. Thus, the garbage will fall into the atmosphere of our planet. Waste is completely burned, leaving only a little dust.
Source: Wprost
I have been working as a news website writer for over 10 years. I have also authored several books on technology news. I am highly knowledgeable in the field of technology and enjoy sharing my insights with others. I am an active user of LinkedIn and use it to connect with other professionals in my field. I am always interested in learning new things and sharing my knowledge with others.
