An accident in a Russian spacecraft removes the International Space Station from its position | space news

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Flight controllers have regained control of the International Space Station (ISS) after it was derailed by a newly arrived Russian research unit.

NASA officials said Thursday’s accident saw the jets of the Noka multipurpose module launch inadvertently about three hours after it collided with the orbital position, briefly spiraling out of control.

It happened while mission controllers in Moscow were doing some “reconfiguration” procedures after docking, according to NASA.

The unit’s planes inexplicably restarted, causing the International Space Station to completely derail from its usual flying position 400 kilometers (250 miles) above Earth. In response, the mission’s flight manager declared a “spacecraft emergency,” NASA officials said.

But the seven crew members aboard the plane — two Russian cosmonauts, three NASA cosmonauts, a Japanese astronaut and an ESA astronaut from France — were never in any immediate danger, according to NASA.

‘tug of war’

Joel Montalbano, NASA’s space station program manager, told reporters that the unexpected drift in the station’s direction was first detected by automated ground sensors, followed 15 minutes later by a “loss of attitude control” that lasted just over 45 minutes.

NASA officials said flight teams on the ground were able to restore the International Space Station’s orientation by activating the thrusters on another module of the orbital platform.

In its radio coverage of the incident, the Russian News Agency (RIA) cited NASA specialists at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, describing the struggle to regain control of the space station as a “tug of war” between the two units.

Determining the location of the station is fundamental to obtaining power from solar panels and communications.

At the height of the accident, Montalbano said, the ISS was out of alignment at a rate of half a degree per second.

The Nauka’s engines eventually turned off, and the space station stabilized and returned to where it started.

Montalbano said contact with the crew was lost for several minutes twice during the outage, but that those on board “did not feel any movement.”

If the situation had become so dangerous that it required evacuation, the crew could have escaped in a SpaceX crew capsule still parked at the outpost and designed to serve as a “lifeboat” if needed, said Steve Stitch, NASA’s commercial crew manager. a program.

Montalbano said there was no immediate indication of any damage to the space station following the accident. Flight correction maneuvers consumed more thrust reserves than desired, “but nothing I would worry about,” he said.

series of loopholes

NASA officials said the cause of the thrusters failure on the Nauka module, which was launched by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, has not yet been determined.

But Roscosmos attributed the post-docking issue on Thursday to the Nauka engines having to run with the vehicle’s remaining fuel, TASS news agency reported.

After being launched last week from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur Cosmodrome, the 22-tonne Nauka unit, named after the Russian word for “flag,” has been hit by a series of loopholes that have raised concerns about whether the docking procedure will go smoothly.

Its release had previously been repeatedly delayed due to technical issues that were initially scheduled to rise in 2007.

The Nauka module is designed to serve as a research laboratory, storage, and pneumatic seal that upgrades Russia’s capabilities aboard the International Space Station.

It’s the first new cabin for the Russian part of the station since 2010. On Monday, one of the old Russian units, the spacewalk, was detached from the space station to make space for the new lab.

Nauka will require several maneuvers, including as many as 11 spacewalks beginning in early September, to prepare it for operation.

The glitch prompted NASA to postpone the planned launch of the new Boeing CST-100 Starliner capsule until at least August 3 on an uncrewed test flight to the space station.

The Starliner was scheduled to blast off atop an Atlas 5 rocket Friday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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