Drama With Attachment of Russian Lab Module to the ISS

Article by William Harwood                                                  July 29, 2021                                                         (cbsnews.com)

• On July 29th, a bit of drama unfolded at the International Space Station (ISS) as the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, replaced the two-decades-old Pirs airlock and docking compartment with their new Nauka multipurpose lab module.

• On Monday, July 26th, the Pirs undocking from the ISS to make way for the Nauka lab module went off without a hitch. The Progress MS-16/77P cargo ship towed the old docking compartment away from the ISS and both were plunged into Earth’s atmosphere a few hours later, burning up over the Pacific Ocean as planned.

• The Nauka multipurpose laboratory module will be attached to the main Russian ISS module, the Zvezda service module. Nauka will provide a crew airlock, an experiment airlock, research facilities, another oxygen generator, a new toilet, expanded living quarters and a robot arm provided by the European Space Agency. The module also is equipped with its own solar arrays, a complex propulsion system, propellant transfer equipment and an independent guidance and navigation system to help orient the station as needed.

• The Nauka module was launched July 21st from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan atop a Russian Proton rocket. Automated systems guided the 44,000-pound Nauka module in for docking on the ISS at 9:29 am as planned. Hooks and latches were engaged to firmly lock the lab module to Zvezda service module.

• On July 29th, as cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov were in the process of “integrating” the new spacecraft with the station’s computer systems, the Nauka module’s thrusters suddenly began firing. The entire ISS station’s pitch, roll and yaw orientation suddenly started changing. Astronaut Drew Morgan NASA’s mission control center in Houston radioed the station: “Just to update you guys, right now we’re in a little bit of a tug of war between thrusters firing from both the SM (Zvezda) and the MLM (Nauka). We’re sorting through the best course of action right now.”

• But the space station’s gyroscopes were unable to counteract the unwanted push from Nauka’s jets, and the space station, stretching the length of a football field with a mass of more than 930,000 pounds, began tilting away from its normal orientation. The entire space station ended up tilted up about 45 degrees. Attitude control was quickly handed off to more effective rocket motors in the Russian Zvezda module, where Nauka was attached. A few minutes later, thrusters in a Progress cargo ship docked on the other side of Zvezda kicked in with additional muscle. Morgan at mission control reported that the MLM thrusters were no longer firing. In a little more than an hour, the space station was back in its normal orientation.

• As standard procedure, a “spacecraft emergency” was declared at the outset, giving the lab complex priority over other spacecraft using NASA’s satellite communications network. ISS program manager Joel Montalbano said in an afternoon teleconference that the station’s seven crew members were never in any danger. “We haven’t noticed any damage to the ISS,” said Montalbano. “One of the things we do after a dynamic event like this is go ahead and sit down with our structural loads team and review all the data, go pull all the telemetry and do an assessment. And so that’ll be the next step.”

• Up to eleven spacewalks will be needed to outfit the Nauka laboratory module and to make multiple power and data connections with the space station. The first two excursions are planned for September.

• Also on July 29th, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket was scheduled to roll out at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and launch an unmanned Boeing Starliner crew capsule in orbit on July 30th for a test flight to the ISS. This was part of the certification of the spacecraft for ferrying personnel to the space station by as soon as the end of the year. But in the wake of Nauka’s unexpected behavior, the Starliner launch was called off. “We wanted to give the ISS program time to assess what had happened today,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s commercial crew program, to “determine the cause and make sure they were really ready to support the Starliner launch and OFT-2 mission.”

A heavyweight Russian laboratory module that experienced a variety of problems

after launch last week docked at the International Space Station on Thursday. But in a moment of unexpected drama, inadvertent thruster firings briefly knocked the sprawling complex out of its normal orientation.

Space station program manager Joel Montalbano said the station was maintaining its orientation, or “attitude,” using massive NASA-supplied gyroscopes when the thruster firings suddenly began at 12:34 p.m. EDT, about three hours after the 44,000-pound Nauka multi-purpose laboratory glided in for docking.

The gyros were unable to counteract the unwanted push from Nauka’s jets, and the space station, stretching the length of a football field with a mass of more than 930,000 pounds, began tilting away from its normal orientation.

Attitude control was quickly handed off to more effective rocket motors in the Russian Zvezda module, where Nauka was attached. A few minutes later, thrusters in a Progress cargo ship docked on the other side of Zvezda kicked in with additional muscle.

The space station ended up tilted up about 45 degrees from its earlier orientation, moving at one point at roughly half a degree per second. But in a little more than an hour, the station was back in its normal orientation, apparently none the worse for wear.

“We haven’t noticed any damage to the ISS,” Montalbano said in an afternoon

teleconference. “One of the things we do after a dynamic event like this is go ahead and sit down with our structural loads team and review all the data, go pull all the telemetry and do an assessment. And so that’ll be the next step.”

A “spacecraft emergency” was declared at the outset, but that was standard procedure in such cases, giving the lab complex priority over other spacecraft using NASA’s satellite communications network. Montalbano said the station’s seven crew members were never in any danger.

“There was no immediate danger at any time to the crew,” he said. “Obviously, when you have a loss of attitude control, that’s something you want to address right away. But the crew was never in any, like, immediate emergency or anything like that.”
It’s not yet known what might have caused the Nauka module’s thrusters to suddenly begin firing as cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov were in the process of “integrating” the new spacecraft with the station’s computer systems.

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