Don't want to alarm anyone, the crew is safe and the ISS is back in back in a nominal configuration for the most part. But, we had a spacecraft emergency declared about an hour ago because the thrusters on the new Russian module MLM started firing for no reason. That caused the ISS to lose attitude control and start tumbling out of control. Luckily, the flight controllers in Houston and Moscow were on the ball, and quickly commanded the thrusters on the rest of the Russian segment (on the Service Module specifically) to fire to offset the motion caused by the MLM thrusters. It kept the ISS from tumbling too bad, which means we were able to keep good lock with the satellite dish and maintain a good command and telemetry link with the space station. Eventually, the MLM thrusters stopped firing, apparently thanks to the automated software onboard. They have a limit in the software on the amount of propellant that can be used in a specific timeframe, and we think when it reached that limit, it turned off the thrusters. We're still not sure.
My shift tomorrow just got a lot busier. We'll have to figure out what happened and what we need to do to prevent it from happening again. And tomorrow is Starliner launch, with docking on Saturday. And tomorrow is when they were planning to flush out the propellant system to prevent the potential explosion problem that I talked about in my other thread. Fun times.
My shift tomorrow just got a lot busier. We'll have to figure out what happened and what we need to do to prevent it from happening again. And tomorrow is Starliner launch, with docking on Saturday. And tomorrow is when they were planning to flush out the propellant system to prevent the potential explosion problem that I talked about in my other thread. Fun times.
