Nauka Fired Its Thrusters For No Reason – OFT-2 Delayed
NASA Invites Media to International Space Station Update
Audio of the teleconference will stream live online at: http://www.nasa.gov/live … To participate in the teleconference, media must contact Kathryn Hambleton at [email protected] by 4 p.m. today for dial-in information.
Keith’s update: NSAA PAO mailed this media advisory at 4:09 pm EDT – 9 minutes after the deadline expired for media to participate. So much for enabling media access.
Apparently @NASA is not going to say that uncontrolled thruster firings by Russia's #nauka module beyond human control that totally reoriented the ISS and required swift intervention on Earth and on board ISS is not a big deal.
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) July 29, 2021
Keith’s update: NASA and Boeing have delayed Friday’s launch attempt for OFT-2 Starliner due tot he Nauka situation. The new launch date is still TBD.
Keith’s note: Just as the hatch to Nauka was being opened Nauka started to fire its thrusters in an uncontrolled fashion putting the ISS some 45 degrees out of its preferred orientation. Progress thrusters were activated to counteract what Nauka was doing. Then the Service Module used its thrusters to counteract what Nauka was doing. Now Russia is waiting to get another pass to communicate with Nauka to see what is going on – and why. NASA is not saying much of anything other than to say that the crew is not in danger.
Nauka has had problems from the moment it reached space. Indeed it had problems in the decades it sat on the ground and had to have one system after another rebuilt and/or redesigned. It was originally FGB-2 – one of the two FGBs that NASA paid for back in the 1990s. This module was a back-up and was only called into service when Russia decided that it could not afford a much more complex laboratory module.
Nauka was unable to use its propulsion system to do orbit burns so it had to use smaller thrusters to do that. Now that it is docked onto the ISS it is supposed to be passive. As such, the random firing of its thrusters in an uncontrolled fashion such that the space station has to fight back to counter this activity is not the sign of a healthy spacecraft. Add in the fact that there were crew inside when this happend is certainly causing some people at NASA and Roscosmos to be concerned.
You have to wonder if NASA and Boeing are at all interested in launching OFT-2 given that this uncontrollable and unexplained situation exists.
Stay tuned.
CONTACT and CAPTURE between #nauka and @space_Station pic.twitter.com/pk9SvMRXi2
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) July 29, 2021
Looks like attitude and rates have somewhat stabilized, MLM venting seems to have ceased. But this was a serious issue.
https://spaceflightnow.com/…
Just when I thought that the Russians got a handle on the issues they have been having with Nauka this happens!
I would be shocked if NASA would allow OFT-2 to launch tomorrow.
Good call.
Jeff Foust (SpaceNews) is reporting that the OFT-2 launch is now deferred to no earlier than Aug. 03, ’21 @ 1:20 pm EDT.
There were lots of online rumors, that after the launch of Nauka, some of the propellant became gaseous and unstable. May be just as well this stuff was vented, albeit dramatically?
At which point does this malfunction become a structural hazard to the station itself? They can’t just keep counter-firing thrusters indefinitely!
Apparently Nauka was out of range of Russian ground stations at the time of the incident which is why they were not able to immediately turn off the thrusters. Clearly there needs to be a way for the ISS crew to control the thrusters at all times at least in terms of shutting them off. Although that’s somewhat easy to say in hindsight, but then again this type of situation is not without precedent considering Gemini 8. Not that the two situations are identical, but the concept of uncontrolled thrusters should not be something that no one has ever thought of.
AIUI the umbilicals from ISS to Nauka had not been connected, so no local control.
IMO Russia’s absence from Artemis is a feature, not a bug.
I understand that all prop has been expended now.
So they didn’t actually solve the problem, they just waited it out, and got lucky. Yikes.
Guess the near-disaster of the Shuttle-Mir program taught us nothing about marrying two incommensurable safety cultures for the purpose of manned spaceflight.
You will have to refresh my memory, what problems on Mir were caused by the combination of two safety cultures?
And even if there were, what exactly was the lesson that we were supposed to have learned, to not work together in space with other cultures?
Since it’s clear from your tone that you’re only interested in starting an argument, I’ll just point you to Bryan Burrough’s Dragonfly and Jerry Linenger’s Off the Planet, among other resources, and decline to engage further. If you’re actually interested in an answer to your question, you’ll find it there.
I haven’t read Linenger’s book; however Dragonfly is a must read. It provides a deep insight with unvarnished truths that are still relevant today.
It really does, especially if you view it through the lens of the findings of the CAIB. It drives home just how lucky we were to not lose people on that mission. American manned spaceflight would look very different today if the worst had happened – and it very nearly did, on multiple occasions.
The well known incidents in 1997 that occurred during Linenger’s five month stay on Mir had nothing to do with the merging of the two cultures, which is what I thought that you were implying, which is why I was asking what problems you were talking about. I realize now that you were simply slamming the Russian space program. Certainly an easy target. But the U.S. safety culture has not been perfect, and not just during some of the Shuttle years. The Russians would not be out of line for being concerned about the first OFT mission, that a spacecraft with so many problems due to lack of oversight was intending to dock with ISS.
I won’t argue the degree of difference in safety between the two organizations, that would require a thorough list on each side. But it can’t be by sheer luck that they have not had a fatal accident in over fifty years. Some of it is luck I’m sure, they have had some close calls, the Shuttle program also had some close calls in addition to the two accidents. But their fifty year record would not be possible without a serious ongoing effort by the people who work in the Russian space program to safely fly cosmonauts and other astronauts in space. Even if at times having to overcome elements of carelessness and incompetence that can creep into any organization. Perhaps even more so in Russia, I won’t argue that.
Your other implication is that because of the Mir incidents we should not have partnered with Russia on ISS. Space is hard. We had trouble with Skylab during both launch and deorbiting. There are valid arguments on each side whether partnering with Russia was a good idea. Your tone came off as unnecessarily harsh in my opinion as it seemed directed at the entire Russian space program not just the individuals responsible for past mistakes.
One can have a good safety structure that keeps folks alive under the dangling sword of less than stellar quality control. You don’t need a hardhat if you have full control of all of the things that can hit you on the head, but if you don’t control all of those things (or worse, don’t even know how much control you do or don’t have), then you need a consistently followed policy of wearing the hardhat.
NASA seems to have very good quality control, but my read of the two shuttle accidents is that those were not quality control problems, but rather a risky mix of haste and hubris. In fact…the shuttle’s very design is an expression of hubris in that it assumes that there will never be a mid-launch RUD. With no escape for the crewed orbiter, strapped to the side of a huge fuel tank, all RUDs are fatal!
Nauka’s issues seem to point to a lack of quality control…which, after several warnings earlier in the orbit, resulted in one of the problems causing an active test of backup systems and corrective action procedures.
So one of the issues now with Nauka is that someone needs to answer the question of who is willing to sleep aboard that module? I read that it is supposed to provide crew quarters for one person. The quality control shortcomings that resulted in all of these problems should also result in a lack of trust in it.
I’ll thank you not to strawman my position in your eagerness to argue with me in my absence.
Sorry I have guessed wrongly (twice apparently) about why you think the thruster firing incident is evidence that we have not learned anything from our Shuttle-Mir experiences, and what NASA should have done instead. I thought you were saying we should have never done ISS with Russia. If that isn’t what you meant, sorry.
Based on Keith’s latest post I can see where the obfuscations in 1997 probably should still be on NASA’s mind and made them more leery as Nauka exhibited problems after launch, that they weren’t getting all of the information. If so that is disappointing as I would have hoped that there would have been at least some improvements in communication since 1997. However I’m not sure what NASA’s options were at this point, I guess request/demand that Nauka not dock with ISS until xyz questions are answered to NASA’s satisfaction. But if they weren’t being told about problems then there’s not that much they could do.
In other words NASA may have learned the lessons, but is having difficulty applying what was learned.
I wonder how many pre-drilled holes Nauka has in it’s hull.
I’m having difficulty finding words to describe this event that aren’t laced with profanity.
They let Nauka approach the station, even though it’s been the spacecraft equivalent of a burning hay wagon from the moment it reached orbit. Why?
Close the inner hatch, put everyone in their respective spacecraft in space suits, then jettison that piece of junk and deorbit it…please.
They can’t, it’s propellent tanks are empty. It burned through every ounce of fuel it had trying to ‘dock’ with the Space Station because its IU couldn’t be convinced that it already had.
Well, that’s something anyway.
Except how will they know when they’ve squished all the other gremlins?
They don’t and Roscosmos is refusing to investigate (likely to avoid embarrassing a politically well-connected personage or two). So, basically, it’s cross your fingers, hope and have open slots in the Kremlin wall to inter the empty coffins of the ‘heroes of Russia’, worse comes to worse.