Space to Ground: The ISS Toolbox: May. 17, 2024

NASA's Space to Ground is your weekly update on what's happening aboard the International Space Station.

What is said in the film

This is the space station toolbox. It's got five drawers and it's one of my favorite things on Space Station. But before we talk about the tools it's important to talk about how you get here and Expedition 70 crew members Jasmine and Loral taught me that just just part of being on Space Station one must power slide in to get to the toolbox, mainly cuz it's fun it's just it's just cuz you can. But anyway go quickly, go through the toolbox I have many tools at home, they're spread all over the place in my garage and they're not quite as compact. The the tool density here makes me so happy the layout makes me so happy, and maybe for home hobbyists people who like to tinker around in the garage, maybe this tool density makes you happy as well.

But drawer number one lots of cool crescent wrenches, standard wrenches here. One of the favorite things I learned about a few years ago was the crows foot. You can check that out using, um, it's great for getting behind tight spaces on Space Station. But lots of cool tools here. Super convenient to get the tools when you need them for a task in fact, you know when we're given a procedure on Space Station the first thing you get is the list of all the tools you're going to need and so typically you start a task on Space Station you you power slide in to the toolbox and you come grab what you need out of these nice little neatly aligned of places.

The 1/4 inch, the 3/8 inch Drive our torque wrenches, everything you really need to to fix a space station. Drawer number three are screwdrivers. I, you know, I look at this thing most times I go into drawer number three and wonder, when do I get when do I get to use this. Like look at the size of this thing, this is a 2 and 1/2 inch. One day.

One day, maybe they'll let me use that. Screwdrivers. Big torque wrench in there. Our pliers. Actually this this tool here I've seen used a fair bit.

We have lots of round electrical connectors on space station and this is good for getting a grid grip when they're on they're too tight and you can't quite get them off. The connector pliers tool, so nice. Quantity too, we have a stack. Everything's nice and neatly kept in here. Drawer number five, maybe, maybe the folks in the ground don't trust us, they took our hammer away.

Maybe it's somewhere else on Space Station, but one big giant wrench has to fit in this box. Anyway, this is your quick tour of the space station toolbox. But one of my crew mates told me before we launched about the beautiful noise that tools make up here, when they they just something about them being in Zero-G as they rattle around together so a common thing for us to do is let's say we're going to go do a a task we're going to go do a repair task. The procedure will tell us exactly how many tools we're going to need what we're going to need. You're going to need this crescent wrench you're going to need, this ratchet, this these connectors and you go typically grab a ziploc bag we have around.

And a lot of our ziplock bags have Velcro on them so you can stick them places and they'll stay, so you can go to your work site carry this little ziplock bag, easily see what tools you have inside and keep them from floating away on you, but maybe I'll demonstrate what some of those sounds are like so if I grab a few tools out of here and you'll note that these have Velcro on them to keep them in place at the work site if we need to as well, which is super nice but you can already hear some of the noises they make. It's super cool, so grab a couple of those. Maybe uh the 1/4 inch ratchet with the flex head, and a couple of, you know, sockets. I will note for tool nerds at home, the 10 mm is here, is actually installed. But maybe, I'm not sure I've got the microphone up near my neck, you can hear that noise.

It's kind of like a space station space station windchime. But that's why we keep things in a ziplock bag so they don't go floating off in your work site. That is the space station toolbox.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from [NASA](https://images.nasa.gov/details/jcs2024m000023_Space to Ground_523_240517). NASA material is generally not copyrighted and is in the public domain.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.