(Bloomberg) — The International Space Station got an unplanned push when the thrusters on a new Russian module turned on unexpectedly after docking.
The movements caused a brief loss of attitude control but the space station suffered no damage and none of the seven crew members was injured, ISS flight controllers in Houston said on NASA TV. The U.S National Aeronautics and Space Administration is planning a news conference later Thursday to discuss the incident.
The mishap occurred a day before Boeing Co. was scheduled to launch its Starliner capsule on a test flight to the orbiting lab as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The Boeing mission is a do-over of a botched test from December 2019 and the Starliner won’t be carrying a crew on the flight, which is scheduled to blast off from Florida at 2:53 p.m. Eastern time on Friday.
NASA is “monitoring the impact to tomorrow’s launch of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft,” according to a statement by the space agency.
Russian cosmonauts had opened the new Nauka module’s hatch and were incorporating its computers with the existing Zvedza service module when the newly arrived spacecraft began firing at 12:45 p.m. Eastern. The thruster firings changed the station’s attitude by 45 degrees, NASA said.
A Russian Progress cargo craft attached to the station began firing its own thrusters to counteract the effect from the Nauka module. Roscosmos flight controllers planned to reconfigure the Nauka thrusters to prevent a recurrence, NASA said. The U.S. space agency and Russia are investigating why the unplanned thrusting occurred.
(Updates with NASA comment in fourth paragraph. A previous version of this story corrected the time in the fifth paragraph.)
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
