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Recently, The Russian news service TASS, which is supported by the Russian government, posted new fairly defamatory allegations about NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor. TASS accused Auñón-Chancellor of having suffered an emotional breakdown aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and damaging a Russian spacecraft so that she could return to Earth sooner.
NASA was quick to respond with statements showing support for its astronaut.
Kathy Lueders, chief of human spaceflight at NASA, tweeted: “NASA astronauts, including Serena Aunon-Chancellor, are extremely respected, serve their country and make an invaluable contribution to the agency. We support Serena and her professional conduct. We do not think these accusations are credible. “
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson then tweeted: “I completely agree with Kathy’s statement. I fully support Serena and will always support our astronauts.”
However, a statement offered by NASA to Ars indicates that there may be more to the story. The statement read: “To protect their privacy, the agency will not discuss medical information regarding crew members.”
This could indicate that Auñón-Chancellor has indeed had an outage, one that NASA does not want to share with the public. But was she responsible for the damage to the ISS?
Rumors have long been circulating in the Russian media that American astronauts were responsible for the hole in a Soyuz spacecraft that caused the space station to leak in 2018. But NASA has continued to claim these claims are simply absurd.
A source said Ars that NASA was notified when the leak was made and was able to immediately notice the pressures falling on the space station. NASA then tracked the precise locations of the American astronauts at the time of the leak and found that none of them were near the Russian segment where the Soyuz vehicle was docked. Russian officials were not satisfied with this explanation, however.
What is really going on here? It’s hard to say.
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