spacecraft thrusters tilt international space station

#Spacecraft thrusters tilt international space station software

TALIA: For the astronauts, there really wasn't much going on, it wasn't so fast a spin that they even really noticed the station was spinning by about, at its fastest, about half a degree per second.ĮRIC: Okay, and so, huge station, half degree a second. Zvezda could not, it could slow the spin, it could not stop the spin.ĮRIC: So still spinning uncontrollably. However, Zvezda versus Nauka, in terms of thrusters, one NASA employee likened it to the ISS bringing a knife to a gunfight. The space station's pretty smart, actually. It was the first to detect the movement, and it started counter-firing its thrusters.ĮRIC: Was that automatic, that astronauts didn't have to, like, go over and turn valves or anything? It was countered pretty quickly by one of the other modules on the space station, Zvezda.

So Nauka's continuously firing thrusters put the space station into a spin. TALIA: I mean, continuously firing thrusters is how you get a rocket into space in the first place, technically, so yeah. But if the thrusters are just going off continuously, I imagine is enough force to get the space station going. So the thrusters stuck on - I mean, usually you get little bursts of those thrusters to rotate your ship a little bit, a tiny bit, to dock just right and get the angle lined up. And this made the space station - which is a very, very massive object - start to spin.ĮRIC: Yeah, so the space station is the size of a football field.

#Spacecraft thrusters tilt international space station software

And then three hours later, for reasons that nobody has quite nailed down yet, they're saying a software glitch, those thrusters begin firing again, while Nauka was attached to the space station. TALIA: Yes, and it used those same thrusters to get itself into position to actually dock with the space station. And then three hours later it began firing its thrusters.ĮRIC: So not the actual rocket engine, just the thrusters that control the spin? And Nauka is a new Russian module and it docked to the space station. TALIA: Yes, it's designed to be added on to. There is a Russian side and an American side to the station.ĮRIC: And it's built like a Lego where you can always add pieces. TALIA: So last week we added a new module to the space station, Nauka, which was added to the Russian side of the space station. But what happened on the station last week? Getting that out of the way, astronauts are fine, control has been regained. There was an incident but the station is a very well engineered spacecraft, and it seems to have come through with flying colors.ĮRIC: Okay, that's great. TALIA: The station is actually in good shape. Now we have a really unbelievable sequence of events at the International Space Station and visitors are asking: is the station okay? Earlier this summer, the Hubble telescope was in trouble.

TALIA: Well, you know I love talking about space.ĮRIC: So it's been a rough summer for us space nerds. Talia, Thanks for always coming on the podcast when we have space questions. Joining me once again is Talia, the coordinator of our very own Charles Hayden Planetarium here at the Museum of Science. Today on Pulsar, we're going to talk about what to do when things go sideways and how the ISS got back under control. Or as we saw last week, the brand new room on your space station makes the whole structure spin uncontrollably. And sometimes the oxygen tanks rupture, or your spacesuit helmet starts filling with water. ERIC: Sometimes on your space mission, everything goes perfectly the entire time you're above the earth.