Look inside Russia's new space module with cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov, who have created a video tour of the new Russian "Nauka" module that docked with the International Space Station last week.
Russia's space agency Roscosmos' Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM) — nicknamed "Nauka," which means "science" in Russian — docked with the space station Thursday (July 29). After docking, the module experienced a software glitch that caused it to accidentally fire its thrusters, causing the space station to temporarily spin and tilt. However, now that the situation has stabilized, the cosmonauts were finally able to open the hatch between the two spacecraft and peek inside.
The pair captured a video of their journey, which was shared on YouTube on Saturday (July 31), which offers a quick glimpse inside the space station’s newest Russian-built module. Nauka will serve as a science lab, a docking port for spacecraft and an airlock for spacewalking cosmonauts.
"Pyotr Dubrov and I welcome everyone from our new module #Nauka!," Novitskiy said in a Tweet. "We will conduct a more detailed tour soon."
Video: Nauka module's hatch opened on space station – Peek inside!
Related: International Space Station at 20: A Photo Tour
Cosmonauts Novitskiy and Dubrov are two of seven crew members currently working on the space station. They are joined by NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur and Mark Vande Hei; Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
Nauka arrived at the orbiting lab at 9:29 a.m. EDT (1329 GMT) July 29 and connected to Russia's Zvezda service module’s Earth-facing port. Novitskiy and Dubrov were preparing to open the hatch to Nauka when its thrusters "inadvertently and unexpectedly" fired at 12:45 p.m. EDT (1645 GMT), pushing the station out of orientation, according to a statement from NASA.
As a result of the unplanned thruster firing, the space station lost what engineers call "attitude control" for about 47 minutes, causing the orbiting laboratory to tilt from its proper orientation. However, the station was able to right itself, with Roscosmos officials citing a short-term software failure as the cause of the thruster misfire.
Novitskiy and Dubrov have since begun unpacking and configuring new hardware delivered aboard the spacecraft. A series of spacewalks will need to be performed to fully prepare the Nauka module for its spacefaring activities.
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