The International Space Station has been lost track after a recently docked Russian science lab malfunctioned.
NASA affirmed the incident happened when the Russian lab – named Nauka – “inadvertently fired its thrusters while docked” at the space station.
Nauka was launched last week from Kazakhstan, requiring eight days to arrive at the ISS where it will fill in as an airlock, research lab and storage unit to support Russian activities at the station.
“All systems are operating normally” after Mission Control teams “corrected the action”, NASA confirmed, reassuring the public “the crew was never in any danger”.
“The station is back in attitude control and in good shape.”
Nauka’s fizzling made the ISS lose attitude by half a degree per second, moving similarly as 45 degrees out of alignment.
ISS Program Manager Joel Montalbano told a press conference after the occurrence the team “really didn’t feel any movement.”
NASA uncovered the engines broke down at 12:45pm ET, only three hours in the wake of docking at the ISS, and required about an hour to regain control of the station.
NASA experts at the Johnson Space Center in Houston said there was a “tug-of-war” among Nauka and a Russian service module’s thrusters to right the station’s orientation.
Russian news office TASS detailed Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, ascribed Nauka’s thruster malfunction to the module working with residual fuel in the craft.
Nauka was at first due for launch in 2007 yet was altogether deferred because of technical issues, including the contamination of its fuel system for 2013.
The ISS is as of now monitored by seven team individuals from NASA, Roscosmos, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the European Space Agency.