The white, satchel-like bag is surprisingly bright, shining just below the limit of visibility to the naked eye, which means observers would be able to spot it using binoculars, according to EarthSky. Its visual magnitude is around a 6, making it slightly less bright than the ice giant Uranus.
To track the bag, observers need only to find the ISS, which is the third-brightest object in the night sky, according to Nasa, and can be located using the agency’s Spot the Station tool. The bag will be orbiting Earth two to four minutes ahead of the ISS.
And, in 2006, late astronaut Piers Sellers lost his spatula to the depths of space while testing a heat shield repair technique, according to Space.com. Sellers, who was using the tool to spread the sticky heat shield goo on to intentionally damaged samples, lamented the loss at the time: 'That was my favorite spatch … don’t tell the other spatulas.'
