When a Russian module failed last week, the International Space Station spun 540 degrees and flipped outside down. Russian officials are now conducting an investigation to determine the full extent of the terrifying incident.
Sergei Krikalev, Roscosmos's head of crewed space missions, made the news during an interview with Rossiya-24 TV Channel on Wednesday.
He believes there is no damage to the ISS, but the unexpected rotation of the orbital outpost should now be "taken into account" when evaluating its service life, according to Krikalev, as per a translation published by Russia's state-run TASS news agency.
A few hours after docking with the ISS, the Nauka module began unexpectedly firing its thrusters, attempting to pull itself away from the space laboratory.
The rogue module and the four gyroscopes that normally keep the ISS stable engaged in a tug of war. Nauka's thrusters spun the station around and flipped it over.
Zebulon Scoville, a NASA flight director in charge of mission control on Thursday afternoon, described the space station as "doing a backflip" to The New York Times.
NASA has assured all preliminary evaluations indicate that the station is in good shape, and that the astronauts are not in immediate danger. Roscosmos has blamed the incident on a software glitch.
Nauka had previously had multiple technical challenges on its route to the ISS, but once there, everything appeared to be good - until mission control computers suggested otherwise.
It's possible that the mistake has resulted in some as-yet-unnoticed adverse consequences. To achieve optimal performance, the solar panels on the station must be exactly aligned. The same may be said about the antennas, which, if not properly positioned, could interfere with communications with ground stations on Earth.
Other issues could arise, but to Krikalev's point, the next investigation should elucidate this.
Statements from space agencies can't obscure the fact that this was a genuinely unprecedented and terrifying event. Regardless of the findings, the recently announced probe is both sensible and necessary.
NASA has since announced that the station has been restored to its rightful position. Russian flight controllers verified to NASA 45 minutes after the incident that the errant thrusters on Nauka had been disabled.
