The International Space Station (ISS) was destabilised after engines of a newly arrived Russian module inadvertently fired up, officials say.
“Mission control teams corrected the action and all systems are operating normally,” US space agency Nasa said.
This was done by activating thrusters on other modules of the ISS. An investigation is now under way.
US and Russian officials said that the seven crew members aboard the space station were never in any danger.
The malfunction happened three hours after the Nauka module docked with the ISS on Thursday, following an eight-day flight.
Nasa officials said Nauka’s jets started firing uncommanded at 12:34 EDT (16:45 GMT) “moving the station 45 degrees out of attitude”.
The Russian Zvezda segment and a Progress freighter then responded to push the station back into its correct pointing configuration. The incident was over by 13:29 EDT.
“What we saw today was just an awesome job by the mission control flight team,” said Joel Montalbano, Nasa’s ISS programme manager.
“Those guys were rock stars again and got us back in attitude control. That also shows you what a robust vehicle we have, and our ability to take these contingencies, recover from them and move on,” he told reporters.
Communications with the ISS crew were lost for two periods, of four minutes and seven minutes, during the incident. However, the US agency stressed that the astronauts were safe. They “really didn’t feel any movement”, it said.
BBC
