After a maneuver on Sept. 28, 2021, the Russian Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft was seen docked at Russia's Nauka multipurpose laboratory unit at the International Space Station.
Today's incident (Oct. 15, 2017) was briefly disrupted by unplanned thruster firings from a Russian spacecraft. This is the second such incident in three months.
Today's spacecraft was the Soyuz MS-18. It is expected to carry Oleg Novitskiy (cosmonaut), Klim Shipenko (film director) and Yulia Peresild (actor) back to Earth on Sunday, October 17. Russian flight controllers started the thrusters of the vehicle at 5:02 AM EDT (0902 GMT), in preparation for a planned pre departure test.
NASA officials posted an update today that stated, "The thruster firing unexpectedly continued following the end of the test windows, resulting in loss of attitude control at the International Space Station (at 5:13 AM)"
They added that "within 30 minutes, flight control personnel regained the attitude control of space station. It is now in stable configuration." "The crew was awake at all times and was not in danger."
Related: International Space Station at 20, A photo tour
According to Interfax Russian news agency, the orbiting laboratory was briefly tilted by 57 degrees from its normal orientation this AM. This was based on communications between Vladimir Solovyov (the flight director for the Russian segment of the station) and Novitskiy.
The space station managers are still not sure what caused the unusually long firing. Roscosmos, Russia's federal space agency is investigating the matter together, NASA officials stated in an update.
The reason why the MS-18's thrusters quit firing is also not clear, but station handlers may have an explanation.
According to The New York Times, NASA flight director Timothy Creamer stated that he believed the thrusters had stopped firing after they exceeded their prop[ellant] limit. This was according to The New York Times. "Moscow will be looking into it and performing their data analysis."
On July 29, the space station was accidentally spun when the thrusters from Russian's Nauka module, which had just arrived, did an unplanned firing. This incident caused the orbiting laboratory to rotate by 540 degrees.
Russian officials attributed the July 29th event to a software bug.
Roscosmos officials stated that a mistakenly executed direct command to turn off the engine for withdrawal of the module was the cause of a short-term failure in software. This caused some modifications to the orientation of the entire complex, as well as the need to revise the statement, published July 30.
Despite the drama today, Soyuz MS-18 is still on track to return home this weekend. The spacecraft will depart the station at 9:14 p.m. ET on Saturday (16 October) (0114 GMT on Oct. 17). It will then touch down in Kazakhstan approximately 3.5 hours later. Space.com has all the action, thanks to NASA TV.
Novitskiy was in orbit for six months. Peresild and Shipenko returned to Earth after only 12 days. They launched on October 5th to film part of a Russian movie, "Challenge", on the space station. They took off together with Anton Shkaplerov (cosmonaut) who is still at the orbiting laboratory.
Mike Wall is the author and illustrator of "Out There" by Grand Central Publishing (2018). This book is about the search for alien life. Follow him @michaeldwall. Follow us on Facebook @Spacedotcom and Twitter @michaeldwall
