ISS Briefly Loses Control After New Russian Module Misfires (cnn.com) 56
destinyland shares a report from CNN: An unusual and potentially dangerous situation unfolded Thursday at the International Space Station, as the newly-docked Russian Nauka module inadvertently fired its thrusters causing a "tug of war" with the space station and briefly pushing it out of position, according to NASA flight controllers. Nauka -- a long-delayed laboratory module that Russian space agency Roscosmos' launched to the International Space Station last week -- inadvertently fired its thrusters after docking with the International Space Station Thursday morning.
NASA officials declared it a "spacecraft emergency" as the space station experienced a loss of attitude (the angle at which the ISS is supposed to remain oriented) control for nearly one hour, and ground controllers lost communications with the seven astronauts currently aboard the ISS for 11 minutes during the ordeal. A joint investigation between NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos is now ongoing. "The incident also delayed the launch of the Boeing Starliner uncrewed test flight to the station, which had been set to launch on Friday," adds CNN.
"NASA says the move allows the 'International Space Station team time to continue working checkouts of the newly arrived Roscosmos' Nauka module and to ensure the station will be ready for Starliner's arrival.'"
NASA officials declared it a "spacecraft emergency" as the space station experienced a loss of attitude (the angle at which the ISS is supposed to remain oriented) control for nearly one hour, and ground controllers lost communications with the seven astronauts currently aboard the ISS for 11 minutes during the ordeal. A joint investigation between NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos is now ongoing. "The incident also delayed the launch of the Boeing Starliner uncrewed test flight to the station, which had been set to launch on Friday," adds CNN.
"NASA says the move allows the 'International Space Station team time to continue working checkouts of the newly arrived Roscosmos' Nauka module and to ensure the station will be ready for Starliner's arrival.'"
So the engines finally fired? (Score:5, Funny)
Better late than never.
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That's what I was thinking: those initial thruster commands that were never actually executed were still in the command queue and whatever was originally blocking their actuation cleared. Brilliant. How many more deferred commands still await?
Cut the death trap loose and get it as far away from the ISS as possible. Burning up in re-entry is the best thing that could happen to it.
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Cut the death trap loose and get it as far away from the ISS as possible. Burning up in re-entry is the best thing that could happen to it.
Pretty sure you can't cut loose a module that's thrusting into the space station, and it may be even more dangerous to try to do so.
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The thrusters stopped a while ago. The relative velocity between the ISS and the module is at zero. They certainly could close the door and unmount the module. They just got done unmounting an earlier Russian module and pushed it into the atmosphere; there's no reason they couldn't do the same thing with this ticking timebomb.
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It's called ideology not logic. Practice makes perfect, the more we do it, the better we get at it and the far more we can achieve.
"Ain't parking a semi-trailer in a loading dock, boy ;)" trying to dock to space craft spinning around our spinning world as we spin around the sun, all moving at very high speeds. One time, custom built, spacecraft, as near perfect as they can get it, zero errors are much harder to achieve than it sounds, especially first and only time around.
If it were easy, I would be postin
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Relative velocity. Google it. Learn it.
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You realize that we experience several of the motions you mention right here. It's not about all that though.
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Pretty sure you can't cut loose a module that's thrusting into the space station, and it may be even more dangerous to try to do so.
I've said many things, but calling her a 'space station' would indeed be dangerous!
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What if the thrust is not exactly into it, what then?
And using the same arguments that Democritus used to prove the existence of the atom, consider that the thrust cannot be exactly into the station. It must be at some angle.
So then you would have to ask, what angle, etc., etc., before you could decide it wouldn't simply rotate a few times and then slip off and go its own way. It would all be in the details, rather than in the word "into."
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What if the thrust is not exactly into it, what then?
Well, that's where the "and it may be even more dangerous to try to do so" part kicks in.
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Pretty sure you can't cut loose a module that's thrusting into the space station, and it may be even more dangerous to try to do so.
What if the thrust is not exactly into it, what then?
Well, that's where the "and it may be even more dangerous to try to do so" part kicks in.
It's hard to get to that, the word "can't" is in the way. The "may be even more dangerous" part was about "trying" to do something you said was impossible. If it turns out it was possible, then it is a different basket of risks that the one already mentioned.
Re:So the engines finally fired? (Score:5, Informative)
For whatever reason they did not turn off the control system on the module immediately after the docking. As a result, when the station executed some adjustments after the module docking, the module own system detected a change and fired to compensate. Then the systems entered a tug of war until they shut off the module one.
Either a human error or lovely result from the war in Ukraine. Nauka was built using the old Kurs flight control module which was manufactured in Kharkiv. As you can probably guess, it was too late to through it out and re-integrate the newer domestic ones and any integration with the original vendor is er... a bit problematic.
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From clues in the post, my guess is that this person is from the former Soviet block. I would guess that English is not their native language, and I'll bet, their English is better then you or I could type in their native tongue. There is no need to be a jerk about a random homonym issue. Obviously, you were able to interpret what they were saying. I will say though, their typing was way better than many I have seen go unchallenged here.
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Ummm, "through" and "throw" are not homonyms....
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They didn't shut it off (Score:2)
the systems entered a tug of war until they shut off the module one
It ran out of propellant [twitter.com] after 44 minutes, and finally shut off by itself.
This is on top of a litany of other issues - main engine problems after launch, sensors that weren't unwrapped before launch, unexpected deviations during the docking process. Best leave it unfueled I think, and limit any ability to cause further trouble.
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There were rumors that some kind of "bellows" in the fuel system might have failed after launch. That meant that the main engines couldn't get enough fuel pressure to start, but fortunately there were back-up engines that needed less pressure and worked. I haven't heard a reason for the misfire, but apparently it was already low on fuel and stopped thrusting because it ran out. It's possible that if it hadn't had fuel problems upon reaching orbit, things could have turned out worse. So now there's hypergols
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And it looks like this has caused the Starliner second test flight to be delayed again.
I'm sure Boeing didn't want to end the week with their stock price tanking again, so it's probably for the best.
"No off switch." - R-5 computer engrams (Score:2)
They combined engrams of WHO?
Re:Chinese haxx0rz (Score:4, Funny)
Add it up. It makes sense. How in the fuck do thrusters just fire? Someone had control.
Or Boeing paid Russia 'cause they needed a delay on the Friday launch that wasn't Boeing's fault ... /cynical
Re: Chinese haxx0rz (Score:2)
Cutting the internet cable only bought they a day. Comcast was just too quick to repair for once
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They just need to get a stronger rope to tie the yoke back so MCAS can't dive it into the nearest active volcano.
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Add it up. It makes sense. How in the fuck do thrusters just fire? Someone had control.
Pretty sure fly-by-wire and computers were involved here. I highly doubt any spacecraft's engines since the '60's is controlled by a valve the pilot turns by hand.
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It's not so much how they fire (probably attitude control). But whether or not a solenoid gets stuck open.
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American Components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN! ;-)
Gemini 8 (Score:5, Informative)
Misfiring thruster. That's what almost did in Armstrong and Scott [youtube.com]
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Indeed. I remember it all too well.
Unplanned changes in acceleration usually don't work out well for the water-bags inside.
death trap (Score:2)
I said it 3 days ago when they couldn't initially get the death trap into the correct orbit: They shouldn't have let the thing within 10km of the ISS. Reliability HAS to be of the utmost importance in space - there's no AAA to get them out of a pickle - and this thing has proven itself to be completely unreliable.
Roscosmos used to do great things. Now it has been bled dry by Vlad and his cronies skimming off its budget for over a decade. Anything it now makes is stuck together with duct tape and chewing
Re:death trap (Score:4, Funny)
They're Russians, so wouldn't that be: AA to get them out of a pickle? :-)
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ARF!
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veely good, veely good.
Re:death trap (Score:5, Insightful)
This shows the clout that Russia has in decision making. I remember the crazy amount of stuff that SpaceX had to go through in its first docking of a supply capsule. It had to do all these test maneuvers near the space station, in such a way that if anything failed (a stuck booster, etc) it wouldn't jeopardize the ISS. Then, after all that, it STILL wasn't allow to actually dock. It was grabbed by the station's arm and connected to the ISS that way, and the capsule was totally passive.
It took multiple capsules demonstrating various capabilities before they allowed it to actually dock on its own.
Here, with this Russian module, it had been exhibiting numerous flight control issues IN THAT FLIGHT and still Russia had the ability to say "we don't care, it will dock on its own".
Space Force is GO! (Score:5, Funny)
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Thunderbird 3 was scheduled to be retrofitted with Blue Origin BE-4 engines so the whole spacecraft is on hold right now.
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Obviously... (Score:2)
Something isn't working right.on the ISS (Score:5, Informative)
It appears the extenal earth-viewing camera is down. At about 11:20 EST July 29 the ISS was in daylight around Vancouver island, BC
I watch the ISS's earth-viewing camera almost every day. It's a replacement for the old HDEV, and it was working 2 or 3 days ago.
https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ESRS/... [nasa.gov]
But now it's showing a sort of a test pattern that I haven't seen before. Anyone know what's going on with that?
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https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/ESRS/... [nasa.gov]
It's back. When I checked a sort while ago ago it was over Poland and heading into sunset, so it's dark right now so all you'll see is the glow of failed pixels.
One odd thing. As the ISS orbits the solar panel arrays rotate to face the sun and you can see the corner of one pass across the bottom of the field of view. When I looked at it a short while ago, I saw a much larger segment of a solar panel than I had seen before, so I wonder if the ISS's orientation has not returne
"ISS Briefly Loses Control" (Score:1)
Holy shit. That is freaking incredible and terrifying news. How the F does that happen. I mean incorrectly firing rockets? You would think there would be an absolute lockout of thrusters once the hard connection had been made. Jesus.
Space is hard... (Score:5, Informative)
This does not appear to be the first time that the ISS has lost attitude control:
https://archive.org/details/NA... [archive.org]
I read a lot of folk here and elsewhere bagging on Nauka in particular and the Russian space program in general. And it's not to say that the module's age or the state of Roscosmos aren't contributing factors. But...
I'd hazard a guess that this was not a stuck-thruster scenario, but a case of the separate GNC in Nauka thinking it was still free-flying, and thinking it wasn't in the attitude it was supposed to be in, and trying to correct it. I'd also like to point out that this is essentially what happened with the first Starliner flight - a US-made, brand new bit of spacecraft kit. If it can happen to that, it can happen to anything.
It's my understanding that at the time of the issue, although Nauka was hard-docked, there were no hard-wired data/control connections between the vehicles. So, I would hazard another guess that the only direct communication between Nauka and the rest of the ISS, if any, was by way of RF links. And, I would also guess that the combined USOS/ROS ISS GNC systems may not be equipped to issue guidance commands to a docked craft that is not hard-wired into the command network.
Either way... I'm glad they got the situation under control, and nobody was hurt. And I'm sure there's lots of smart people checking the health of the station, and working to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Downplayed (Score:4, Informative)
Right now, it seems like NASA and most news sources are downplaying the severity of what happened. One of the news sources I read yesterday (ars technica) specifically said that the Russian module kept firing its boosters until it ran out of fuel. That's pretty bad, and far more than just "someone forgot to turn off the module's auto-navigation system for a few minutes". It also mentioned how great the risk was - for example the ISS isn't designed for random components to be applying torques to the station. It was built in zero G as lightweight as possible, so there are parts that can't handle a tug-of-war type stress where force is being applied at one point, and a counter-force is being applied at a different point. The station was rotated as much as 45 degrees from where it should have been, basically stopping all collection of solar energy, and it lost communication because the antenna arrays could not be aimed correctly at ground stations, etc.
The counter-force applied by the station's thrusters kept the station from entering a fast rotation that would have torn it apart. I wonder how much fuel was depleted from that system to counter the Russian module?
Anyway, it was much more dangerous and severe than most news sites are reporting.
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
Re:Downplayed (Score:4, Informative)
500kg is the number I see being tossed around. At Falcon 9 cargo prices that's $1.2 million in fuel wasted.
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The station was rotated as much as 45 degrees from where it should have been
In light of the reported velocity of 0.5 degrees per second, I don't believe it was just 45 degrees. You couldn't reach 0.5 degrees per second and stop again so quickly as to only achieve a 45 degree deviation.
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Obligatory... (Score:2)
Russian hackers (Score:1)