Surprise Soyuz thruster firing 'accidentally' tilts International Space Station again

Cosmonauts on board the International Space Station (ISS) on Saturday initiated emergency protocols after the ISS was tilted out of its usual position in orbit and turned 57 degrees. Russian space agency Roscosmos and the USA's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sprang into immediate action after the Soyuz spacecraft’s thruster firing, which later undocked from the International Space Station at 9:14 pm EDT, carrying three people back to Earth, briefly moved the ISS out of its orientation.

While the test firing of thrusters incident was denied by the Russian space agency in a statement on its website, New York Times reported that it was, in fact, an emergency on the station and the second such since July. The report stated that the Russian module inverted the outpost.  

The incident that rattled NASA astronauts and ISS crew occurred when Russian astronaut Oleg Novitsky was performing a test of the engines aboard the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft. The module had been docked at ISS since April. The spacecraft deorbited and landed carrying Russian cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of Roscosmos and Russian actress Yulia Peresild and Russian producer-director Klim Shipenko at 12:36 am ET on Sunday, October 17.

ISS turned by 57 degrees

Expedition 66 officially began aboard the station at the time of undocking in the presence of Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency), the station commander for the crew consisting of NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, and Mark Vande Hei, JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide, and Roscosmos cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, NASA informed. 

"We think — and we haven't got confirmation — we think the thrusters stopped firing because they reached their prop[ellant] limit," NASA flight director Timothy Creamer told the astronauts shortly after the thrusters shut down, The New York Times reported. "Moscow is checking into it and doing their data analysis."

While the engine test was scheduled to end, “the thruster firing unexpectedly continued,” Leah Cheshier, a NASA spokesperson, said in an email, obtained by NYTimes. The latter added that the station orbital positioning control was lost at 5:13 am ET alerting both Moscow and NASA’s astronaut headquarters in Houston. “Oleg, take it easy, the station was turned by 57 degrees, no big deal,” Interfax, a Russian news agency quoted a Russian mission control official in Moscow as saying during the incident. “We had to make sure that engines are in order, this is important,” he added in his remarks.

“Station, Houston space-to-ground two, we see the loss of attitude control warning,” NASA mission control in Houston alert was reported as saying. Later, the NASA administrator informed that the situation was brought under control. "Within 30 minutes, flight controllers regained attitude control of the space station, which is now in a stable configuration," they added. "The crew was awake at the time of the event and was not in any danger."