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Rogue Soyuz Rocket Engine Firings Are No Big Deal

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 11, 2015
Filed under , ,
Rogue Soyuz Rocket Engine Firings Are No Big Deal

NASA ISS On-Orbit Status 9 June 2015
“Today at 10:27 a.m. Central time during the routine testing of communications systems between the Soyuz TMA-15M spacecraft and the International Space Station (ISS), Soyuz thrusters activated inadvertently which led to a slight change in the orientation of the ISS. Actions were immediately taken to reorient the ISS. There was no threat to the crew or the station itself, and the issue will have no impact to a nominal return to Earth of the Soyuz TMA-15M on Thursday. Roscosmos specialists are determining the cause of the incident. Once more information is known, additional information will be provided.”
Keith’s note: Hmmm … rocket engines on a spacecraft just fire for some unknown reason, alter the ISS orientation such that contingency measures need to be taken and … that’s it: stay tuned? When I worked at NASA something like this in a safety review would have justifiably been a cosmic issue of epic proportions. Not any more, it would seem. I guess there will be some telecons and some Powerpoint slides.
Soyuz Engines Fire When They’re Not Supposed To, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

28 responses to “Rogue Soyuz Rocket Engine Firings Are No Big Deal”

  1. John Kavanagh says:
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    No big deal. And ice has always fallen off the external tank. No big deal.

  2. Michael Spencer says:
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    I’d say that someone at NASA is trying to tiptoe around the Bear.

  3. Yale S says:
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    I would assume that if a dragon, cygnus, or cst100 docked to iss randomly fired thrusters there would be a wailing and gnashing of teeth heard up to the stratosphere.

    • AstroInMI says:
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      Agreed on that. Including grounding of the programs until the thrusters were tested in space again w/o docking and Congressional hearings.

      • PsiSquared says:
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        There’s no real partisan angle to congressional hearings on the seemingly increasing frequency of issues with Russian rockets and spacecraft, and that could very well be the reason we’ve not heard a peep out of Congress on this issue. Sadly it seems only national tragedies and partisan kerfuffles result in congressional hearings any more. That’s been the case for quite a while, at least as far back as the 90’s.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Seriously? What about a certain multi-millionaire congress critter from California? Congressman Issa? He was quite the busy little nit finder.

          • PsiSquared says:
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            There’s no political angle favorable to the Congressman in this since there’s no way a hearing would ultimately show that cutting Commercial Crew funding in light of Russian equipment problems was a smart decision by Congress.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Ah, yes, I misunderstood your comment.

  4. Tannia Ling says:
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    When they got you by the b***s you don’t have much freedom to complain. Apologies in advance for the crassness.

    • PsiSquared says:
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      True, but when you’ve got a plan to release that grip on the balls, you don’t cut the funding for that plan.

  5. disqus_wjUQ81ZDum says:
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    Chris Hadfield twitter “While re-powering the Soyuz after six months, it’s possible to inadvertently activate its attitude control and fire the thrusters, No real harm done, it happened during Expedition 7 too, just wastes a bit of fuel, and Soyuz has plenty.”

    • Antilope7724 says:
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      When the Progress was approaching the Mir space station, it also “wasted” a bit of fuel…before it hit and damaged the station.

    • hikingmike says:
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      What about ISS fuel? ISS had to adjust itself… How was this done?

      And how were the thrusters turned off? I’m guessing there was some obvious way, maybe the contingency is built into procedures, but I’d be interested to know if someone had to toggle a switch that was off, then on and then off again or what.

      • disqus_wjUQ81ZDum says:
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        Russian thruster system on the station. About two hours later the US GNC took back over with the control movement gyros.

        • hikingmike says:
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          Ok thanks, so it did use ISS fuel. Sure probably not a big deal and there is plenty but still important to note and Hadfield didn’t.

          • John Thomas says:
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            Since Russian fuel was used and the Russian segment is part of the ISS, then yes ISS fuel was used. The control moment gyros don’t use fuel other than electricity from the solar panels.

          • disqus_wjUQ81ZDum says:
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            Like Hadfield said “just wastes a bit of fuel.” Since the station went to ZPM, that saves the station around 50.8kg of propellant per. A ZPM was done for the TMA-15M undocking. Call it a trade sort of.

  6. Antilope7724 says:
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    Here is a similar incident from Sep 2003 (during Exp 7) where the attached Progress fired its thrusters early and the ISS gyros tried to counter the motion caused by the unexpected firing.

    https://news.google.com/new

  7. david says:
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    Keith, The section of text you posted looks like an executive summary. The details of the anomaly detection, isolation and recovery are further down in the on-orbit status….

    ISS Attitude Control Disturbance: ISS experienced unexplained torque around 15:27 GMT in the roll axis. The attitude control system experienced a large number of US Control Moment Gyro desaturation Russian Segment thruster firings by the Russian segment with a continued increase in attitude error.

    Solar Alpha Rotary Joints (SARJs) were safed and attitude control was handed over to RS thrusters. Preliminary indications seem to point to an approximate 38-second inadvertent 41S thruster firing
    following a scheduled Kurs checkout in preparation for 41S undocking.

    MCC-M performed realtime commanding to stop the thruster firing. ISS attitude control has been handed back over to the USOS and the ISS is in a stable attitude.

    All ISS and Soyuz systems are operating nominally at this time.

  8. John Thomas says:
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    Where did the summary say it wasn’t a big deal? This is just a summary or report of what went on. Now if the NASA PR says no big deal or no investigation is planned, then yeah they’re saying no big deal.

    • disqus_wjUQ81ZDum says:
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      Well, In the ISS status report, it does mention “The structures team reviewed the available data and has confirmed that there are no impacts to any planned dynamic operations.”

      • John Thomas says:
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        That sounds like a statement of fact. Are you saying that the engine firing cause a problem to some planned dynamic operation of the ISS?

        • disqus_wjUQ81ZDum says:
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          No. The statement in the status report clearly said “no impacts to any planned dynamic operations.”

  9. SouthwestExGOP says:
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    The Russians have a very casual attitude about safety, they also insisted that the one big fire (1997 with Jerry Linenger on board) on Mir was “an incident” since no one was killed. The Russians claimed that the fire only lasted 15 seconds (at first) though it actually lasted about 15 minutes.

  10. Anonymous says:
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    Every problem can be buried beneath a deep enough stack of Powerpoint slides.