Who sabotaged the international space station?

On August 29, NASA and the Russian Space Agency discovered a hole in the International Space Station that spilled a limited amount of breathable air into space.

And immediately the question that came up, ready for a thriller of the ominous outer space, did it? The implications are so dire – the sabotage by someone on the ground, or even more frightening, one of the six astronauts on board – that early reports suggested that it was about A puncture by random space debris. But that does not seem to be the case anymore.

Field controllers ordered residents of the station to repair the hole with tape. After the simple repair, the resort – the only out-of-world habitat of humanity – is fully functional and there is no danger to the crew, NASA said.

But according to the Russian Space Agency, the hole could come from someone who deliberately pierced the thin shell of the Soyuz refueling capsule and who, by the time NASA detected the leak, was attached to the Russian side from the station.

"There have been several attempts to drill," said Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency Ruscosmos, in TV commentaries on 4 September. "What is it: a production defect or premeditated actions?"

The mystery began when controllers in Houston and Moscow detected a slight drop in the station's internal atmospheric pressure. The entire crew – three Americans, one German and two Russians – was sleeping at the time. The controllers waited for the crew to wake up to warn them of the problem.

"They were not in danger," NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz told The Daily Beast by e-mail.

"After a morning of investigations, the crew reported that the leak had been isolated in a hole about two millimeters in diameter in the orbital compartment or in the upper part of the Soyuz MS-09 probe attached to the Rassvet module. Russian segment "station," NASA reported on its official blog.

The Houston controllers worked with their colleagues from Moscow and the crew of the station to plug the hole. Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev "used epoxy on a gauze wipe to plug the hole identified as a leak source," NASA said.

Meanwhile, the controllers restored the normal atmospheric pressure of the station by releasing oxygen from a Progress power capsule, one of three spacecraft moored at the station at that time.

While reading the news of the leak, observers on Earth immediately suspected "micrometeoroid / orbital debris" or MMOD – a.k.a. But a strike of the MMOD powerful enough to punch a hole in the station is highly unlikely.

"The space station is the most heavily armored spacecraft ever used," Schierholz said. "Critical components, such as habitable compartments and high pressure tanks, will normally be able to withstand the impact of debris as large as one centimeter in diameter.

Shortly after plugging the leak, NASA released photos of the hole. Of course, it did not look like the kind of damage space debris would inflict. "Hmmm, do not look like MMOD" tweeted Chris Bergin, editor of NASASpaceFlight.com.

In fact, the hole was very similar to the one that was drilled. Sloppily. Perhaps by someone with a "hesitant hand", as Rogozin said in his televised remarks.

Rogozin said that it is possible that someone tried to sabotage the Soyuz capsule while she was on Earth. "We are checking the version of the Earth," he said. "But there is another version that we do not exclude: deliberate interference in the space."

It is unclear why one of the station's team members would want to vent their own breathing air into space. It is unprecedented that a cosmonaut or astronaut, or anyone associated with a country's space program, secretly damages a spaceship. "There is no case of previous sabotage in the history of space that I can report," said Roger Theunius, former chief historian of NASA, at the Daily Beast.

Roscosmos convened a special commission to investigate the hole. The commission will release its report in September, said the Russian Space Agency. "Measures will be defined to prevent such situations."

"NASA will support the work of the commission as appropriate," said Schierholz.

If the hole is really the result of sabotage, the implications are serious for the Russian Space Agency, NASA and humanity's access to space.

While US and Russian robotic capsules carry supplies to the International Space Station, only Russian Soyuz capsules are certified for transporting people to the station. NASA plans to start using new Boeing and SpaceX capsule designs to transport the crew from 2019.

Until then, the rest of the world needs Russian capsules. If Moscow founds Soyuz, he temporarily founds the entire human race.

NASA insisted that it is optimistic that the Russians will determine what did not work and that it does not happen again. "Our Russian partners have demonstrated their human and technological resilience many times during the history of their efforts in the field of manned spaceflight," Schierholz said.

"NASA does not directly supervise quality control in Russia," the Daily Beast told an insider of the space industry on condition of anonymity, as they were not allowed to speak to the press. "Agencies agree to adhere to a set of interface requirements and specifications regarding spacecraft intended for the ISS."

This does not necessarily mean that the station is in danger, even if there is a saboteur. It would take a big hole to pose a serious risk.

It may take hours or days before a hole has a noticeable effect on the atmosphere of the ISS, the insider said. "Small leaks do not immediately endanger a large spacecraft such as the ISS."

But on the ground, the incident shook the Russian public. The country's widely-censored television news rarely admits the government's mistakes and almost never accounts for the failings of public bodies. But last week's story about "space detectives" led state television stations to fight to condemn the management of the entire Russian space industry.

"This two-millimeter hole reminded us of a huge hole in the Russian space industry," said a Rossia-24 presenter Wednesday, describing cases of reckless technical control in the field. "As usual, everything was covered by Russian" maybe it will work. "

With all its oil and gas funds, Russia has never been able to produce its own quality mobile phone or notebook, but all Russians have cited space ships as an example of national pride. The first human in space, the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, is treated as a national hero. But the glory years have long passed. Space pride is disappearing now. Today, even press agencies loyal to the Kremlin must admit the obvious: the Russian space agency is in crisis.

Russian Space Policy Institute head Ivan Moiseyev said on national television on Wednesday: "We still have spaceships and cosmodromes, but incidents caused by stupid mistakes have become systematic."

And the central question of this mystery comes back again and again: who pierced the hole in Soyuz?

On Tuesday, MP Maksim Surayev even speculated that one of the members of the Russian crew had drilled the hole. "It could be psychologically difficult there, or there was a conflict," speculated MP Surayev. "Maybe someone felt bad and tired so much, they drilled this hole so they could go home earlier."

Russian cosmonauts and space experts were unhappy with Surayev's speculation. "I think it's absurd to suggest that someone has intentionally damaged the spacecraft," cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko told the news agency Tass. "Astronauts could not damage the spacecraft because they are healthy people, both physically and psychologically."

In Moscow, experts continue to debate who is to blame. "We still do not know who owns this vacillating hand," said the host of the Russia-24 channel and suggested that she could be "someone in the assembly shop of the city of Krolev, in the suburbs of Moscow ".

The survey now focuses on employees of Energia, Russia's leading space rocket company.

"One thing is clear for the Kremlin: it is time to reform Roscosmos, but there is a dilemma of globalization: in the current political situation, we can not buy any space equipment from the corrupt United States," said Sergei Markov An analyst told the Daily Beast.

When in doubt, blame the Americans.