Roscosmos Is Investigating Potential Deliberate Soyuz Damage
Russia says space station leak could be deliberate sabotage, PhyOrg
“Space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin said the hole detected Thursday in a Russian space craft docked at the orbiting station was caused by a drill and could have been done deliberately, either back on Earth or by astronauts in space. Astronauts used tape to seal the leak after it caused a small loss of pressure that was not life-threatening. “There were several attempts at drilling,” Rogozin said late Monday in televised comments. He added that the drill appeared to have been held by a “wavering hand.” “What is this: a production defect or some premeditated actions?” he asked. “We are checking the Earth version. But there is another version that we do not rule out: deliberate interference in space.”
Fracture on Soyuz spacecraft most likely caused by technological error — Roscosmos CEO, TASS
“It is a matter of honor for Energia Rocket and Space Corporation to find the one responsible for that, to find out whether it was an accidental defect or a deliberate spoilage and where it was done – either on Earth or in space. Now it is essential to see the reason, to learn the name of the one responsible for that. And we will find out, without fail,” he pledged.”
Errant drill likely the culprit in hole in Space Station that caused air leak, Russia says, Houston Chronicle
“The hole astronauts discovered in the Soyuz spacecraft, measuring a fifth of a centimeter in diameter (the thickness of a penny), is a perfect circle followed by a trail of scuffs and scratches. The image was released in a NASA video that the space agency later deleted. The picture of the hole instantly reminded Cowing of his very poor drilling skills, so much so that he said he was surprised Russian officials didn’t drop the idea of a space debris impact sooner. “Immediately, this looked like a drill bit bounced or did something wrong,” he said. “A micrometeorite hit would have formed a different shape.”
Better get those Dragons and Starliners ramped up.
An upset drunk worker?
Hopefully NASA will be able to abandon the Soyuz soon before an astronaut is killed by the lack of reliable Russian quality control system.
Years ago stories floated around about unhappy auto workers welding beer cans to the inside of car doors, visible when the mechanism failed.
Apocryphal? Maybe. The anti-union crowd loves the story. But not unbelievable. Those were the days when a car with 50,000 miles on the odometer was damn old. And 100,000 was brag worthy, though a car with that kind of mileage probably had the motor replaced more than once (like the old VWs).
It’s true that Detroit had many labor problems in those days, mostly associated with pay and conditions.
In many ways, the success rate for Soyuz capsules over many decades remains one of the bright spots in the history of human space flight.
An astronaut deliberately sabotaging an escape craft? Has there ever been any hint of anything like this ever in the history of humans in space? The only thing close that I can think of is an angry astronaut doing a road trip in a diaper to confront a romantic rival.
While I suspect that he astronaut angle is highly unlikely (p<0.0001), imagine what effect that would have on operation of the ISS.
No, as far as I know, no astronaut has even been accused of anything close to sabotage. Incompetence, perhaps once or twice. But technically the damage was not to an escape craft. It was in the orbital module, and the descent module separates from it and the service module before reentry. A slow leak in the orbital module shouldn’t affect a safe return.
The phys.org story quotes a couple of Russian sources on the subject (I assume this is fair use, since they are just quoting others…):
>A Russian MP who is a former cosmonaut suggested that a psychologically disturbed astronaut could have done it to force an early return home.
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>”We’re all human, and anyone might want to go home, but this method is really low,” Maxim Surayev of President Vladimir Putin’s ruling party, told RIA Novosti state news agency,
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>”If a cosmonaut pulled this strange stunt—and that can’t be ruled out—it’s really bad,” said Surayev, who spent two stints on the ISS.
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>”I wish to God that this is a production defect, although that’s very sad, too—there’s been nothing like this in the history of Soyuz ships.”
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>Alexander Zheleznyakov, a former space industry engineer and author, told TASS state news agency however that drilling the hole in zero gravity would be nearly impossible in that part of the spacecraft.
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>”Why would cosmonauts do it?” he asked.
Almost all of this played out in RIA Novosti and other Russian media over the weekend with bits appearing, disappearing, stories going 404, and being re-re-edited within an hour or two before they fessed up. Also interesting was NASA posting the images, then pulling them – seemingly while Russia tried to get its story straight.
Then there’s Rogozin doing his best to tick off the Cosmonaut corps. Great for morale there, Mr. Trampoline.
Pulling and seriously altering information you have put online is something I don’t quite understand. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I tend to think that, once you have publically said something, you have said it. And, once said, you can’t deny that you said it. You can apologize, or say that you were mistaken, or something like that. But you can’t make it as if you never made the statement.
In the past few years, I’ve seen many reports about people saying something on the internet or social media, realizing it was a mistake, deleting or altering it and thinking that lets them “unsay” what they said. To my possibly old fashioned way of thinking, that’s like Orwellian revisions by the Ministry of Truth. And, since all the original information tends to be archived somewhere, it’s an effort to hide mistakes which is doomed to failure.
The picture you posted clearly shows a drilled hole, but the question is whether or not the hole was created in the first place by drilling, or was the drilling done to clean up a hole created by an impact so that it could be patched? High speed impacts tend to leave a rough hole that would be more difficult to seal, so it is logical that some drilling would be done as part of the repair process, and it is logical that with the confined access and zero-g environment such drilling wouldn’t necessarily be pretty. I have no proof this was the case and maybe it’s not, but absent clarification, just because we see evidence of drilling does not automatically mean it was the result of foul play or incompetence.
Drilling out an MMOD hole before patching could create metallic debris floating about the station – not good for circuitry. Much planning and mitigation would be involved which wasn’t seen. Most everyone except Rogozin believes the hole was drilled on the ground.
Let’s be more specific. Even Rogozin doesn’t believe it was drilled as part of the repairs. The repairs have been described in some detail, and no one has mentioned drilling as part of that work. And let’s not get into a wilderness of mirrors by playing what-if-that-report-is-fake logic games.
Initially all the reports of a drilled hole seemed to source back to comments from Roskosmos (specifically Rogozin) and seemed rather speculative. However, here is a story quoting comments supporting the drilled hole story direct from Energia.
https://spaceflightnow.com/…
“RIA Novosti quoted a source at Energia saying “the hole was made on the ground. The person responsible for the act of negligence has been identified.””
It would be instructive to know a little more detail about exactly what transpired since the discovery of the leak.
I understand the concept that you never rule out any possibilities during an investigation, but it just seems counterproductive to announce that publicly without any evidence that it was done on orbit. Similar to aviation accidents, although rare there have been cases of pilots intentionally crashing airplanes. So it’s something that investigators don’t rule out, but when an airliner has just crashed what’s the point in announcing publicly that they are looking at all possibilities including deliberate actions by one of the pilots.
The latest explanation, that the hole was drilled by accident, plugged, and not reported seems believable. Things like this happen in medicine all the time and get swept under the rug, and it’s likely in situations where human error is punished if reported. NASA at least has made the case that mistakes happen and if the error is reported the person who made the error should not be punished, except by being forced to complete a mountain of paperwork to report it.
Some might consider the bureaucracy involved a cruel and unusual punishment all of its own!