Space engineers will analyze whether a glitch that caused the International Space Station to spin out of its normal orientation could have impacted any of its systems, a Russian space official said Wednesday.
Sergei Krikalev, the director of crewed space programs at the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, emphasized that last week's incident did not inflict any observable damage to the space station but he said that experts would need to study its potential implications.
Thrusters on Russia's Nauka laboratory module fired shortly after the module arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, making the orbiting outpost slowly spin about one-and-a-half revolutions. Russia's mission controllers fired thrusters on another Russian module and a Russian cargo ship attached to the space station to stop rotation and then push the station back to its normal position.
NASA said in a tweet Tuesday that the station was 45 degrees out of alignment when Nauka's thrusters were still firing and the loss of control was discussed with the crew. "Further analysis showed total attitude change before regaining normal attitude control was 540 degrees," NASA said. Roscosmos' Krikalev, a veteran of six space missions who spent a total of 803 days in orbit, noted Wednesday that firing orientation engines created a dynamic load on the station's components, making a thorough analysis of whether some of them could be overstressed necessary.
The launch of the 22-ton module has been repeatedly delayed by technical problems. It was initially scheduled to go up in 2007, but funding problems pushed the launch back, and in 2013 experts found contamination in its fuel system, resulting in a long and costly replacement. Other Nauka systems also underwent modernization or repairs.
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