TEMPLE, Texas — On Nov. 2, NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station lost their grip on a tool bag, which is now in orbit around the Earth and, with a good pair of binoculars, it can reportedly be seen from the ground.
But that wayward bag is far from the only unusual object to wind up circling our planet. Humans have sent numerous manmade objects to space over the years, whether intentionally or not.
From sandwiches to gorilla costumes to movie memorabilia, here are just some of the other space oddities people have sent beyond our atmosphere.
A Spatula
This year's tool bag incident is not the first item dropped during a spacewalk, nor is it even the first tool bag to turn itself into an unintended satellite.
The strangest however, according to Space.com, might be a spatula. Space.com said the utensil was dropped by late NASA astronaut Piers Sellers as he was spreading "heat-shield repair slime" during the space shuttle Discovery's flight STS-121 in 2006.
"That was my favorite spatch," Sellers reportedly said about the incident. "Don't tell the other spatulas."
Luke Skywalker's Lightsaber
"Star Wars" is one of the most famous and influential sci-fi franchises ever created, so it was only fair that a prop from the saga would make it into space one day.
In 2007, a team of astronauts delivering the Harmony Module to the International Space Station did just that.
The launch happened to line up with the 30th anniversary of the release of "A New Hope", the first-ever "Star Wars" film, and so to commemorate the anniversary, Lucasfilm and Space Center Houston worked together to send the original prop lightsaber wielded by Luke Skywalker into space alongside the astronauts.
Gene Rodenberry's Ashes
"Star Wars" is not the only iconic sci-fi franchise to send part of its legacy into the stratosphere, except in the case of "Star Trek", it went beyond a simple piece of memorabilia.
In 1992, the NASA Space Shuttle Columbia carried some of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry's ashes into space with it, before returning them to Earth, giving Roddenberry the unique honor of being the first person to ever have their ashes sent into the final frontier.
Male "Parts"
Ashes are not the only bit of human anatomy to make it into orbit, according to space agency Sent Into Space.
On April Fools' Day 2019, the agency says they themselves launched a pair of rubber... "male parts"... into space to raise awareness for testicular cancer, in a partnership with the Robin Cancer Trust.
A Tesla
With Elon Musk being the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla, it was probably inevitable that one of Tesla's cars would make it into space at some point.
Sure enough, in 2018, Musk launched a Tesla Roadster into a heliocentric orbit, driven by a crash test dummy dubbed "Starman", according to livescience.com.
As a bonus, the vehicle also contained a copy of Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" novel, as well as a towel and sign that read "DON'T PANIC", in a nod to the book.
A "$30 million sandwich"
One of the most controversial objects sent into space was reportedly a humble corned-beef sandwich.
Smuggled on board the Gemini 3 spacecraft in 1965 by astronaut John Young, the sandwich reportedly began to break apart when Young took it out to eat, causing concerns about crumbs interfering with the operations of the craft.
Young and his crewmate Gus Grissom were reportedly called to testify in front of a Congressional hearing after the incident, after which NASA's associate administrator for manned space flight, George Mueller, stated "We have taken steps... to prevent reoccurrence of corned-beef sandwiches in future flights".
Since the sandwich incident, numerous foods have made their way to space, including a hamburger, a pie and a Pizza Hut pizza.
Music for Aliens
When the Voyager spacecrafts launched in 1977, they carried with them two "golden records" meant to carry information about the human race, should the crafts ever be found by extraterrestrial life.
Among the information on the records was a collection of digitally encoded images, animal noises and greetings in 55 different languages.
Also contained in the records were various selections of music, including both "Eastern and Western classics".
There is no word yet on if either of the crafts have encountered any alien life, but given that they are the only two crafts to have left our solar system into interstellar space, if there is life out there, they might have a chance of hearing some of our Earth music.
Pieces of the Wright Brothers' first airplane
It was only 66 years after the Wright brothers made the first powered, controlled flight in human history that astronauts landed on the moon.
To honor that legacy, Neil Armstrong reportedly took pieces of that first-ever aircraft, known as the Wright Flyer, with him to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission, including pieces of fabric from the plane's wings and pieces of its propeller.
In 2021, another piece of fabric from the Wright Flyer reportedly journeyed to Mars under the solar panels of the Ingenuity helicopter.
Manhole Covers
A manhole cover may not be the most interesting thing to make it to space, but it deserves recognition for exactly how it made it there. Unlike most of the other objects on this list, two manhole covers are believed to have made it all the way into outer space without the help of a rocket.
According to LiveScience.com, in 1957, an underground nuclear test in the Nevada desert propelled a 4-inch-thick maintenance cover high into the sky, and it never came back down.
Later, to test what might have happened to the cover, astrophysicist Robert Brownlee repeated the test, launching another cover in the same way.
Camera footage of the experiment showed that the cover could have reached a top speed of 125,000 miles per hour, which is around five times the velocity needed to escape the Earth's atmosphere.
Not only are the two manhole covers likely far out in space, they are both in the running for the fastest manmade objects ever.
Dinosaur Bones
Believe it or not, pieces of numerous dinosaurs have made their way into space over the years.
Space.com says the first person to bring dinosaur bones into orbit was payload specialist Loren Acton in 1985, who brought bones from a baby Maiasaura, a duck-billed dino. In 1998, the skull of a 210-million-year-old Coelophysis traveled to the space station Mir on the shuttle Endeavor.
In 2014, a tyrannosaurus fossil launched on the first Exploration Test Flight by NASA's Orion spacecraft, loaned by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Colorado "as a reminder of how much life Earth has seen during its existence".
Most recently, Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company Blue Origin brought nearly 200 bone fragments from a 65-70-million-year-old Dromaeosaurus into space aboard its New Shepard suborbital launch vehicle.
A Gorilla Suit
As demonstrated in the infamous corned-beef sandwich incident, sometimes astronauts find ways to sneak some not-so-standard issue belongings onto spaceflights.
In 2016, retired astronaut and current Arizona Senator Mark Kelly managed to smuggle a gorilla suit to his twin brother Scott Kelly, who was staying on board the International Space Station.
A viral video soon followed of Scott Kelly donning the suit and chasing his crewmate Tim Peake around the station.
Even more amusing, this was not the Kelly brothers' first attempt to smuggle a gorilla suit to the ISS, but sadly the first attempt failed after the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded after launch in 2015, taking the gorilla suit with it.
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