“Toxic smell” at Progress hatch was hypergolic fuel
Figure 3 from September Inspector General report, annotated to show Zvezda and Poisk locations.
According to information obtained by Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com, the “toxic smell” detected by Russian astronauts immediately after opening the hatch to unload the newly docked Progress at ISS was actually a small but very dangerous amount of hypergolic fuel left over from the previous Progress freighter.
[T]he working hypothesis was that the ground control failed to perform a routine purging of propellant lines between the station and Progress MS-27 before its undocking. As a result, highly toxic residue of hypergolic propellant remaining in the lines could easily spill into the main cavity of the docking mechanism on Poisk, once Progress MS-27 undocked from the module, an industry source told RussianSpaceWeb.com. After the arrival of Progress MS-29, the interior of the docking mechanism between the space station and the cargo ship was re-pressurized trapping the propellant residue and letting it into the station after opening of the hatches. [emphasis mine]
If true, this incident indicates a shocking level of incompetence, sloppiness, or even malice at Russian mission control. How can mission controllers forget to do a “routine purging” of hypergolic fuel, especially when it is known that this very dangerous fuel — which can dissolve skin if you allow yourself to get in contact with it — can “easily spill” into the docking port where people will travel?
The Russian government pays its top-level engineers very little, even as those engineers watch often bungling managers rake in big bucks through legal deal-making as well as bribery and embezzlement (only rarely caught and punished). These circumstances have been suggested as behind the various suspicious leaks in Soyuz and Progress capsules as well as the new Nauka module. In the case of the Soyuz, it was clearly caused by someone drilling a hole on the ground before launch and then fixing it with a makeshift patch that was certain to fail during the mission in space. Both the Progress and Nauka leaks also suggested a similar cause. The Russians told NASA its investigation discovered who drilled that Soyuz hole, but never revealed what it had found. As for the Progress and Nauka leaks, no investigation results were ever even discussed.
There is something distinctly rotten within Roscosmos, a rottenness that it appears Russia is doing little to fix. More likely it can’t really fix it, because the Putin administration in the late 2000s made Russia’s aerospace industry a remake of the Soviet Union, a single government-run corporation that owns everything and blocks all competition. Since then it has shown a steady decline in its ability to accomplish much and the steady growth of problems such as this.
The sooner Americans no longer have to partner with Russia the better. We must hope that NASA can at least get to 2030 and its planned retirement of ISS without a major failure. This leak occurred within the Poisk docking module that is attached to the larger Zvezda module where air is leaking from the station due to serious stress fractures in its hull. Each docking puts more stress on Zvezda, risking a catastrophic failure, so much so that it is now NASA policy to close the hatch between the American and Russian halves of the station whenever such dockings take place.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Figure 3 from September Inspector General report, annotated to show Zvezda and Poisk locations.
According to information obtained by Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com, the “toxic smell” detected by Russian astronauts immediately after opening the hatch to unload the newly docked Progress at ISS was actually a small but very dangerous amount of hypergolic fuel left over from the previous Progress freighter.
[T]he working hypothesis was that the ground control failed to perform a routine purging of propellant lines between the station and Progress MS-27 before its undocking. As a result, highly toxic residue of hypergolic propellant remaining in the lines could easily spill into the main cavity of the docking mechanism on Poisk, once Progress MS-27 undocked from the module, an industry source told RussianSpaceWeb.com. After the arrival of Progress MS-29, the interior of the docking mechanism between the space station and the cargo ship was re-pressurized trapping the propellant residue and letting it into the station after opening of the hatches. [emphasis mine]
If true, this incident indicates a shocking level of incompetence, sloppiness, or even malice at Russian mission control. How can mission controllers forget to do a “routine purging” of hypergolic fuel, especially when it is known that this very dangerous fuel — which can dissolve skin if you allow yourself to get in contact with it — can “easily spill” into the docking port where people will travel?
The Russian government pays its top-level engineers very little, even as those engineers watch often bungling managers rake in big bucks through legal deal-making as well as bribery and embezzlement (only rarely caught and punished). These circumstances have been suggested as behind the various suspicious leaks in Soyuz and Progress capsules as well as the new Nauka module. In the case of the Soyuz, it was clearly caused by someone drilling a hole on the ground before launch and then fixing it with a makeshift patch that was certain to fail during the mission in space. Both the Progress and Nauka leaks also suggested a similar cause. The Russians told NASA its investigation discovered who drilled that Soyuz hole, but never revealed what it had found. As for the Progress and Nauka leaks, no investigation results were ever even discussed.
There is something distinctly rotten within Roscosmos, a rottenness that it appears Russia is doing little to fix. More likely it can’t really fix it, because the Putin administration in the late 2000s made Russia’s aerospace industry a remake of the Soviet Union, a single government-run corporation that owns everything and blocks all competition. Since then it has shown a steady decline in its ability to accomplish much and the steady growth of problems such as this.
The sooner Americans no longer have to partner with Russia the better. We must hope that NASA can at least get to 2030 and its planned retirement of ISS without a major failure. This leak occurred within the Poisk docking module that is attached to the larger Zvezda module where air is leaking from the station due to serious stress fractures in its hull. Each docking puts more stress on Zvezda, risking a catastrophic failure, so much so that it is now NASA policy to close the hatch between the American and Russian halves of the station whenever such dockings take place.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
We must get over the naive notion that working with enemies will make them friends. Hopefully there will be no “partnerships” with Russia or China in space from now on. It’s probably too late for the moon, but we should limit this contagion from spreading to Mars. Let them get there on their own, if ever.
I can see a betting line forming up over whether the International Scam Station makes it to decommissioning or has a catastrophic incident prior to that time.
2nd to last paragraph: “cooperation” => “corporation”
A correction to your diagram:
The Poisk module is the one directly below the word “Poisk”, called Docking Compartment 2 by everyone except the NASA public affairs office. You’re pointing to the transfer tunnel (PrK), which is an integral part of the Service Module.
mkent: The diagram was revised by me to add Poisk to what NASA describes repeatedly as the “nadir” or space-facing end of Zvezda. I was puzzled by this description because it did not match this IG diagram from September, and I knew Poisk has been attached for longer than that.
I will correct the diagram. Thank you!
Michael McNeil: Thank you. Fixed.
” . . . to what NASA describes repeatedly as the “nadir” or space-facing end of Zvezda.”
I was going to quote Inigo Montoya here, but it turns out that ‘nadir’ has an astronomical meaning, as well as the commonly understood one of ‘lowest point’. Conceptually, not physically. In astronomy the term refers to the point on the Celestial Sphere directly below the observer. I suppose NASA is technically correct; I would use ‘distal’, but like Martha Stewart using ‘dressing’ for ‘stuffing’, no one calls it that.
I’m going to assume that this failure to purge applied to only one of the two hypergolic propellants. Given the basic nature of hypergolics, it seems all but certain that a failure to purge both would have resulted in – at a minimum – a hot old time on the exterior of the docking port immediately after separation of the departing Progress freighter. Worst case would have been an explosion after docking of the arriving Progress which could well have wrecked at least the Russian side of the ISS and maybe some of the rest as well.
The next six years – if ISS manages to last that long – look to be spicy in a Perils of Pauline sort of way. NASA, ESA and JAXA astronauts ought, by rights, to get hazardous duty pay as well as flight pay for their time on ISS going forward.
I saw this same Russian (Soviet) lack of maintenance in the late 1960s during the Moon Program. My group in night vision R&D at a California location would receive from time to time “retrieved” Soviet equipment for study. The construction was typically shoddy and showed signs of not only no maintenance but also no way to maintain or repair it. The technology was also at least one generation behind.
The Russians and their allies in central Asia are great theorists, but their engineering is second rate. This was and is the problem with any cooperative program.
Jack Lifton: Russia then sounds like Boeing nowadays, which sadly represents the standard of too many modern American corporations.
It seems to me that Robert’s observation about Russian and Boeing engineering points to a common problem: when an organization is ruled by non-technical people with a different agenda (political for the Russians, short-term financial and political for Boeing), engineering is a secondary priority. In realms like aerospace where the margin for error is smaller (the weight penalty precludes the level of overbuilding and overengineering that can be used in fixed infrastructure like bridges), the risks from faulty (or overruled) engineering can become catastrophic very quickly.
Jack Lifton says: “I saw this same Russian (Soviet) lack of maintenance in the late 1960s during the Moon Program.”
Story out of the oil patch. One of my fellow travelers is an oilie who worked for a while in the Persian Gulf. He told me about loading tankers with oil. Pumps were powered by scavenged tank engine(s). Took 250 – 300 hours to fill a tanker at that particular port, which was also the useful time of service of the engine powering the pumps. Tossed the old one and installed a new one for the next tanker.
Completely different philosophy for maintenance. Use it up and toss it. Replace it with a new one. Certainly does a number on the logistics tail to support whatever it is they want to do.
Kind of makes you wonder how the pilots in the west who own MIGs keep them flying. I expect they purchase certified Russian parts from Russian clients, making maintenance of the jets a cash cow for the Russians. Cheers –
I believe the Russian hyperbolic fuel of choice is unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UMDH; or 1,1-dimethyl hydrazine to be IUPAC compliant).
That stuff is nasty… and has a strong rotten fish type odor.
The oxidant would be nitrogen tetroxide in nitric acid. Also nasty – and as stated earlier, if both were present very dangerous: check the Nedelin catastrophe and the Damascus Arkansas explosion.
Yes, the fuel is UDMH. I’ve read that it has highly unpredictable health effects. The Space Shuttle’s thrusters and maneuvering engines used the somewhat less toxic monomethyl hydrazine, or MMH. But it’s still pretty toxic. I remember once having to leave one of the Orbiter Processing Facility buildings at KSC due to a suspected MMH leak.
I think the current Soyuz/Progress design uses liquid nitrogen tetroxide for the oxidizer. That would have left a reddish-brown cloud in the air.
I hate seeing what Putin has done to their industry. I had occasion to work with two Russian aerospace companies on the Shuttle/Mir program. Energia I did not have a high opinion of, but Khrunichev was as good as any Western aerospace company, and better than some. One of the main motivations for inviting Russia into the ISS program was to try to keep Russian aerospace in business, and not incidentally, preventing their engineers from going to work for China. (Back when we still cared about not letting China get access to tech.) It was hoped that Russia would build a free-market industry, and might even compete for contracts in the West some time in the future. So much for that. Putin came along and ruined everything, with his hare-brained quest to re-create the Soviet Union.
Putin was worse than Proxmire.
Alabama Slamma wrote: “I hate seeing what Putin has done to their industry.”
The Russian/Soviet space industry was never very careful. For example, they rammed a Progress into their Mir space station, and one of their oxygen generators caught fire in a scary way.
The Progress accident was likely a result of the way the Russians/Soviets perform their experiments, giving extra pay for the operator for a successful experiment. This gives incentive to get the experiment done, but that comes with risks if the experiment is not going well. The operator tends to continue into dangerous situations due to the financial incentive to get it done. Mir lost an entire module this way, from the collision. Chernobyl happened because they were experimenting with a cold start method, and it did not restart in the prescribed way, so the operator-in-charge ordered more rods withdrawn, resulting in an uncontrolled start that went way too far too fast to control.
“Putin came along and ruined everything, with his hare-brained quest to re-create the Soviet Union.”
The Soviet Union didn’t work out that well the first time. My guess is that Putin thinks that the right people were not in charge, back then, and that he is the person to finally do it right. If it requires the right people to work the system then it is not the system that works but the people.
On the other hand, free market capitalism works well even when the wrong people work it. We know this, because when the Republic of India moved slightly from socialism toward free market capitalism, its population prospered quickly. When the People’s Republic of China moved slightly from communism toward free market capitalism, its population also prospered quickly. Between the two countries, a billion people came out of poverty, all because of the slight shift toward free market capitalist economies. Marxists, socialists, and communists are definitely the wrong people to run free market capitalism, yet it works even when these wrong people run it.
Could the two Russian modules be disconnected and dropped into the atmosphere one at a time?
I would connect another private test modules and offer it to the Russians in exchange. They could move all their equipment into the new one before dropping the old ones.
Lets try to make it safe before we get into political arguments.