This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
ISS News

The Nauka Incident: Deja Vu All Over Again In Space

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 8, 2021
Filed under , ,
The Nauka Incident: Deja Vu All Over Again In Space

Space Station Incident Demands Independent Investigation, Jim Oberg, IEEE Spectrum
“How close the station had come to disaster is an open question, and the flight director humorously alluded to it in a later tweet that he’d never been so happy as when he saw on external TV cameras that the solar arrays and radiators were still standing straight in place. And any excessive bending stress along docking interfaces between the Russian and American segments would have demanded quick leak checks. But even if the rotation was “simple,” the undeniably dramatic event has both short term and long-term significance for the future of the space station. And it has antecedents dating back to the very birth of the ISS in 1997.”
Keith’s note: The first person I thought of when this happened was Jim Oberg. Back in the 90s Jim and I were tag teaming coverage of things that happened on board Mir as part of the Phase 1 effort to build a joint U.S./Russian space station out of what was once Mir-2 and Space Station Freedom. NASA was not happy with what we reported. Much of what we uncovered spoke to bad communications between the U.S. and Russian teams, an underlying level of distrust, and a lot of ad hoc decision making. But the over-arching intent on both sides was to make things work – since things simply had to work – and to put forth that unified front – especially when things got rocky.
These items from 1997 come to mind:
Charlie Harlan’s Thoughts on Spaceflight Safety, 29 June 1997
“When NASA originally began the Shuttle/Mir Program, no rigorous safety analysis or risk analysis was accomplished. NASA decided based on the then understood historical performance of safe Mir operations to accept that record as a given. This was done by a subjective review process unlike the systematic safety and reliability analytical techniques utilized for U.S. human spaceflight. If you remember, at that time the Russians were not always forthright about their systems failures or some of the problems they had in the past. The decision was made at the highest levels of NASA, and the formal safety analysis that was established for the Phase I Program was only for the new joint operations activities, new experiments, and new procedures. The acceptance of the existing Mir safety record was driven by management judgment, and therefore for formal and structured documented risk baseline exists for the start of the program. It should be very clear to everyone that the risk level to human safety on the Mir Station has increased somewhat since the early management decisions and agreements were made.”
Better-Cheaper-Faster: The Risk of Being Open and Honest (Part 1), 16 July 1997
“Instead, PAO reverts to its least open behavior on the Shuttle/Mir program. A harbinger of things to come on ISS? Individuals who are allowed to speak for NASA are thoroughly briefed so as to know what NOT to say. Press releases are diluted and sanitized. I get all the internal NASA email, so I see what doesn’t make it on TV – or the press wires. I hear all the stories from frustrated program managers who speak of PAO saying things such as “why do they need to know this” or “we’d rather not let that out right now”.
Keith’s note: Echoes from the past. Example: the sanitized stuff that dribbled out of NASA PAO after the Nauka event designed to minimize details as to what actually happened and to accentuate the level of cooperation between the U.S., Russia, and other ISS partners. I guess we’ll have to wait for one of those one hour Aerospace Safety Advisory Committee telecon meetings at some point in the future – the sort of meeting NASA PAO never announces – where the truth will start to dribble out – as it did after Mir and other accidents.
Jim also recounts the rocky first hours of the launch of FGB-1 – aka Zarya – on 20 November 1998. It refused to obey firing commands and the U.S. was kept in the dark for a while. Flash forward to 2021 and its twin – Nauka – originally built as FGB-2 as the back up for FGB-1 (paid for by the U.S.) had similar problems once reaching space.
To be certain the International Space Station program has been a resounding success overall and future international efforts could do well to learn from it. Given the continued bad blood between the U.S. and Russia it is astonishing that the ISS has managed to exist – literally and politically – above the fray of terrestrial squabbles. Indeed, it has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize as a result – an idea I personally thing is worth pursuing. I am one of the 100,000+ people who designed and built this amazing spacecraft – one that was paid for by over a billion taxpayers. And I call it the “Undiscovered Country” since I feel its fullest potential has yet to be tapped.
But, accomplishments and potential aside, this does not mean that the picture onboard the ISS is perfect. It is not. Underneath the orbital comradery there are still problems. The ISS program just declared the first “spacecraft emergency” in its entire existence on orbit. That is big news, right? Yet NASA and Roscosmos do not want to talk about it. Why is that?
I hope Congress holds a hearing on this – just like they did after the fire and collision on Mir a quarter of a century ago. If something is broken then it needs to be fixed – even if NASA won’t admit that there is a problem. And what is it they say about people and organizations who have problems? The first step is to admit that there is a problem.
Nauka Was An Accident Waiting To Happen And NASA Knew, earlier post

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

16 responses to “The Nauka Incident: Deja Vu All Over Again In Space”

  1. Winner says:
    0
    0

    I wouldn’t hold my breath on Congress. Heck, the US nearly had a coup and nearly half of Congress doesn’t even want to investigate it.

    • Terry Stetler says:
      0
      0

      Once the focus is extremism in all its flavors an investigation is welcome, but as it is now that isn’t the case. The far-left riots & insurrections need serious investigation too, and it hurts Democrats (as opposed to the illiberal “progressives”) not to do so.

  2. SouthwestExGOP says:
    0
    0

    Sadly, our Russian colleagues have a LONG record of minimizing events in the past – the Mir fire and the Mir/Progress collision come to mind. NASA has always let them get away with it.

    Right now the Zvezda module has a continuing leak and more air escapes the leak than information escapes about it.

    • Hari says:
      0
      0

      And we still don’t know about the origins of the holes found inside Soyuz MS-09, back in 2018. Rogozin suggested, at the time, that one of the three American astronauts aboard ISS may have drilled them!

      • SouthwestExGOP says:
        0
        0

        Rogozin said that they knew what had happened but would not tell us, is the last that I remember. But think about who could be unobserved for a long period where they could get out a drill, put in the right drill bit, and make a hole. And then put it all away in the tool kids. Could that have happened on orbit, where the crew members are closely scheduled and are seldom alone? Probably not.

        • Hari says:
          0
          0

          The allegation was so ludicrous, it really didn’t merit any credence, and yet was investigated by Roscosmos. Serena Aunon-Chancellor was the American who launched and landed in MS-09, so what would be the point sabotaging her only ride? Nauka on the other hand didn’t know it was coming or going.

          • Hari says:
            0
            0

            Situation just got real hazy. Now it’s alleged Aunon-Chancellor got DVT during her mission and panicked. According to a Russian news report she drilled a hole inside MS-09 to expedite an immediate return to Earth(!)
            However, that didn’t happen. Additionally, the next launch, Soyuz MS-10, aborted inflight that October and failed to reach ISS. Chancellor plus her German and Russian crewmates were forced to remain on board, until before Christmas 2018, after MS-11 successfully launched and docked.

  3. Paul Gillett says:
    0
    0

    Jim Oberg is always a must read.

    He has a decades old well deserved reputation, as go-to source for information on Russian flights; in addition to NASA issues.

    His background, experience, insights and ability to communicate an accurate BS free analysis; is a gift to those of us who follow the space programs.

    With Keith providing the same here these many years, we are well served.

  4. james w barnard says:
    0
    0

    Apparently there was a point in time/orbit when the station was out of contact with the Russian control center, so they couldn’t shut down the thrusters. Certainly this was predictable, in which case, Houston should have been “in the loop” to be able to take whatever action might have been necessary in the event of a problem, such as the one that occurred.

    Also, did NASA actually not know the rotation was as severe as it was, or did they just not want to make it public, perhaps until they could determine there was no severe effect? Also, in the event that the station was really rolling and started to break up, could the various “lifeboats”, Soyuz, CrewDragon, etc. have been safely undocked and backed away without hitting something?

    • SouthwestExGOP says:
      0
      0

      If the crew had to retreat to their lifeboats and back away – they would do it. But there has certainly been LITTLE examination of an unplanned event like that. Might some part of structure swung around and impacted them?

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      I don’t think mission control in Houston can send commands to the Russian modules on ISS. And certainly not to Nuaka. It was docked and mechanically linked to ISS at the time, but electrically connected and integrated with ISS. Communications with it were only by direct radio link to Earth.

      As far as how much the station rotated, the initial statements were a little unclear. I think the originally reported 45 deg. was the angle when mission control declared an emergency. That would have been immediately available. It sounds like the full rotation-and-a-half was reconstructed from recorded data rather than the real time telemetry.

      • Todd Austin says:
        0
        0

        While I don’t see Roscosmos giving NASA the access needed to manage their modules any time soon, it makes sense for NASA to give them bandwidth on TDRSS to communicate with their crew and equipment while the station is out of direct contact with the ground in Russia. Surely that’s in everyone’s best interest.

        • fcrary says:
          0
          0

          As I understand it, Nuaka‘s communications systems aren’t able to use TDRSS. A TDRSS link would have had to go through ISS. And, at the time of the incident, Nuaka was only mechanically linked to ISS. No ISS to Nuaka data lines available.

  5. tutiger87 says:
    0
    0

    Jim Oberg was a great mentor to many flight dynamics folks. Straight shooter who was always willing to share his knowledge. He is a must read!

  6. richard_schumacher says:
    0
    0

    “Flight controllers here looking very carefully at the situation…”

  7. Nick K says:
    0
    0

    Is there another FGB style module getting ready to fly? I suspect this was the last of its kind. The fact the last one flew 23 years ago was the first reason they didnt understand it, and the fact there is not another one planned might be the next reason the Russians do not want to spend a lot of time on it. The time they needed to know what to do was before the launch.