Russians Having Problems In Space - Part 2 of 4 Parts

Russians Having Problems In Space - Part 2 of 4 Parts

Part 2 of 4 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     A few hours after docking last week, the Nauka module abruptly fired its maneuvering rockets totally on its own. The misfiring set the three hundred- and fifty-six-foot space station spinning around its axis, two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth. NASA controllers on the ground in Houston, TX were unable to halt the spin. Only Russian controllers had any access to the remote controls of the Nauka module.
     The radio link to the ISS and its modules requires a direct line of sight. A half hour had to pass before the orbit of the ISS took it over Russa and the controllers at Roscosmos could turn off the misfiring thrusters.
     At first, NASA announced that the ISS spun just forty-five degrees before the Russians gained control. NASA admitted that it was wrong five days later. The ISS is festooned with modules, solar panels and heat venting radiators. Instead of forty-five degrees, the thin-skinned space station rotated five hundred and forty degrees or one and one quarter turns.
     In order to restore the station to its normal orientation, NASA turned on its thrusters for another half-turn. NASA then tweeted, “Station is in good shape and operating normally.” NASA told Space.com that the ISS crew was never in any danger. Scoville tweeted that he had never “been so happy to see all solar arrays and radiators still attached.” It may very well be that the ISS was in no danger of disintegrating. However, NASA and Roscosmos are very lucky that the station did not suffer extensive and expensive damage to vital systems. Roscosmos was asked for a comment but they had nothing to say. Worse, the July thruster problem is just the most recent indication of Roscosmos incompetence.
     Back in August of 2018, a Russian Soyuz capsule being used to shuttle people and supplies to the ISS must have escaped the attention of Roscosmos quality-controls. It arrived at the ISS with a two-millimeter hole in its hull. Once the Soyuz docked with the ISS, it began sharing the ISS atmosphere and slowly started venting the atmosphere into space. Controllers in Houston and Moscow eventually detected the drop in air pressure and sent the station crew in search of the leak. The crew found the hole, patched it and sent the Soyuz module back to Earth.
     Inspection of the returned capsule reveals some troubling details. Dmitry Rogozin is the controversial head of Roscosmos space agency. He said on Russian television that “There were several attempts at drilling.  What is this: a production defect or some premeditated actions?”
     Two months later, a different Soyuz capsule was involved in another close call. The capsule was launched on a trip to the ISS with an American and a Russia onboard. A sensor malfunction on the rocket which caused the rocket to fail. The capsule containing the passengers ejected at an altitude of thirty-one miles and parachuted safely back down to Kazakhstan.
Please read Part 3 next