Nauka shook up ISS more than first revealed
According to new reporting, when the new Russian module Nauka unexpectedly began firing its engines, it rotated the International Space Station far more than first revealed, requiring a much more complicated effort to bring the station back to its correct orientation.
Zebulon Scoville, the flight director at NASA mission control in Houston, revealed that the 45 degrees that was initially reported as the amount ISS rotated was incorrect.
According to Scoville, the event has “been a little incorrectly reported.” He said that after Nauka incorrectly fired up, the station “spun one-and-a-half revolutions — about 540 degrees — before coming to a stop upside down. The space station then did a 180-degree forward flip to get back to its original orientation,” according to the report.
Scoville also shared that this was the first time that he has ever declared a “spacecraft emergency.”
It appears that though the station spun far more than first reported, the rate of rotation was still relatively slow, so it apparently did no harm to the station.
Scoville also revealed that, based on the data on hand during the event, it appeared Nauka was also trying to undock itself from the station. Mission controllers tried to counter this by firing engines on a Russian Progress freighter as well as on the Zvezda module.
Had Nauka’s engines had not stopped firing (for unknown reasons, though probably because they ran out of fuel), there was the real chance the accelerations could have shaken the station apart. Moreover, that other engines were brought into play suggests that the Russians not only did not know why Nauka’s engines fired, they had at the time no way to shut them down, and were thus forced to improvise other actions to try to save the increasingly dangerous situation.
According to new reporting, when the new Russian module Nauka unexpectedly began firing its engines, it rotated the International Space Station far more than first revealed, requiring a much more complicated effort to bring the station back to its correct orientation.
Zebulon Scoville, the flight director at NASA mission control in Houston, revealed that the 45 degrees that was initially reported as the amount ISS rotated was incorrect.
According to Scoville, the event has “been a little incorrectly reported.” He said that after Nauka incorrectly fired up, the station “spun one-and-a-half revolutions — about 540 degrees — before coming to a stop upside down. The space station then did a 180-degree forward flip to get back to its original orientation,” according to the report.
Scoville also shared that this was the first time that he has ever declared a “spacecraft emergency.”
It appears that though the station spun far more than first reported, the rate of rotation was still relatively slow, so it apparently did no harm to the station.
Scoville also revealed that, based on the data on hand during the event, it appeared Nauka was also trying to undock itself from the station. Mission controllers tried to counter this by firing engines on a Russian Progress freighter as well as on the Zvezda module.
Had Nauka’s engines had not stopped firing (for unknown reasons, though probably because they ran out of fuel), there was the real chance the accelerations could have shaken the station apart. Moreover, that other engines were brought into play suggests that the Russians not only did not know why Nauka’s engines fired, they had at the time no way to shut them down, and were thus forced to improvise other actions to try to save the increasingly dangerous situation.
