By Shuchi Giridhar
Washington D.C., Aug 4: The Nauka (Russian for “Science”) is a Multipurpose Laboratory Research Module developed by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. On July 29, 2021, it docked with the International Space Station (ISS) alongside the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft.
While work was being done to activate the newly attached Russian module last Thursday, the Nauka’s jet thrusters inadvertently restarted a few hours after it had docked to the space station. With seven crew members aboard, the reignition caused the entire ISS to pitch out of its normal flight position some 250 miles above the Earth, putting the crew and station in quite an emergency. NASA’s mission control confirmed that the initial warning signs were thought to be false alerts, but the video monitoring confirmed that the ISS spun one and a half revolutions about 540 degrees. It then came to a halt upside down, followed by a 180-degree forward flip to revert to its original orientation. During this time the ISS, which is roughly the length of a football field, was slowly rotating four times per hour. The station’s altitude control was lost for 45 minutes, causing the antennas set up for communication in microgravity to malfunction. During the emergency, communication with the crew was also lost twice for several minutes. To restore the station’s proper alignment, ground-based teams activated thrusters on another module that had previously docked at the ISS.
According to officials, neither the station nor the astronauts are in danger and the space station is still recovering from the mishap. Russia said on Friday that the ISS’s loss of control was caused by a software glitch and possibly a lapse in human attention. A separate investigation is underway to determine the cause of the mishap.