ISS tilt-a-whirl
Posted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 3:11 pm
"Unplanned thruster firings by a Russian spacecraft briefly knocked the International Space Station off-kilter Friday, the second such incident in less than three months," reports Space.com:
The spacecraft involved today was the Soyuz MS-18, which is scheduled to bring cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, film director Klim Shipenko and actor Yulia Peresild back to Earth early Sunday morning (Oct. 17)... "Within 30 minutes, flight controllers regained attitude control of the space station, which is now in a stable configuration," NASA officials wrote in an update this afternoon. "The crew was awake at the time of the event and was not in any danger."
The orbiting lab briefly tilted from its normal orientation this morning by 57 degrees, according to the Russian news agency Interfax, which cited communications between Novitskiy and Vladimir Solovyov, the flight director of the station's Russian segment.
Space station managers don't yet know what caused the anomalously long firing... It's also unclear why the MS-18's thrusters stopped firing, though the station's handlers have some ideas. "We think — and we haven't got confirmation — we think the thrusters stopped firing because they reached their prop[ellant] limit," NASA flight director Timothy Creamer told agency astronauts shortly after the thrusters shut down, according to The New York Times. "Moscow is checking into it and doing their data analysis."
The spacecraft involved today was the Soyuz MS-18, which is scheduled to bring cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy, film director Klim Shipenko and actor Yulia Peresild back to Earth early Sunday morning (Oct. 17)... "Within 30 minutes, flight controllers regained attitude control of the space station, which is now in a stable configuration," NASA officials wrote in an update this afternoon. "The crew was awake at the time of the event and was not in any danger."
The orbiting lab briefly tilted from its normal orientation this morning by 57 degrees, according to the Russian news agency Interfax, which cited communications between Novitskiy and Vladimir Solovyov, the flight director of the station's Russian segment.
Space station managers don't yet know what caused the anomalously long firing... It's also unclear why the MS-18's thrusters stopped firing, though the station's handlers have some ideas. "We think — and we haven't got confirmation — we think the thrusters stopped firing because they reached their prop[ellant] limit," NASA flight director Timothy Creamer told agency astronauts shortly after the thrusters shut down, according to The New York Times. "Moscow is checking into it and doing their data analysis."
So they ran until out of gas."We think — and we haven't got confirmation — we think the thrusters stopped firing because they reached their prop[ellant] limit,"
That would be the simplest explanation.