Impact of space station spin requires study, official says

MOSCOW (AP) — Space engineers will analyze whether a glitch that caused the International Space Station to spin out of its normal orientation could have impacted any of its systems, a Russian space official said Wednesday.

Sergei Krikalev, the director of crewed space programs at the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, emphasized that last week's incident did not inflict any observable damage to the space station, but he said that experts would need to study its potential implications.

“It appears there is no damage,” Krikalev said in an interview broadcast by Russian state television. "But it’s up to specialists to assess how we have stressed the station and what the consequences are.”

Thrusters on Russia's Nauka laboratory module fired shortly after the module arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, making the orbiting outpost slowly spin about one-and-a-half revolutions. Russia's mission controllers fired thrusters on another Russian module and a Russian cargo ship attached to the space station to stop rotation and then push the station back to its normal position.

Both U.S. and Russian space officials said the station's seven-person crew wasn't in danger during the incident.

The station needs to be properly aligned to get the maximum power from solar panels and to maintain communications with space support teams back on Earth. The space station’s communications with ground controllers blipped out twice for a few minutes on Thursday.

NASA said in a tweet Tuesday that the station was 45 degrees out of alignment when Nauka’s thrusters were still firing and loss of control was discussed with the crew.

“Further analysis showed total attitude change before regaining normal attitude control was (tilde)540 degrees,” NASA said, emphasizing that the...