The International Space Station (ISS)

Toroid

Founding Member
They're now suggesting the hole was made with a drill while it was still on Earth. You can see the drill marks next to the hole.
Russia says ISS leak could be deliberate sabotage | Daily Mail Online
The 'micro fracture' was discovered after astronauts noticed a drop in pressure
  • It was originally believed the hole was caused by a micro-meteorite
  • This was triggered by oxygen escaping from inside the ISS into space
  • Russia now claims the damage came from inside the huge space station
  • A top official said marks from a drill were found around the small hole
  • A leading theory is that the hole was made on the ground
  • It has been suggested the person responsible may have already been identified
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Toroid

Founding Member
Who drilled the hole? According to the story all the astronauts were sleeping when the pressure change was detected and ground control decided to let them sleep before informing them. Maybe one of the crew sleep-floated and drilled the hole.
Who Sabotaged the International Space Station?
NASA and the Russian space agency on Aug. 29 discovered a hole in the International Space Station that was leaking the station's limited supply of breathable air out into space.

And immediately the question that presented itself, ready made for a grim outer-space thriller, is who done it? The implications are so sinister—sabotage by someone on the ground, or, creepier still, one of the six astronauts on board—that initial reports suggested it was a puncture by some random space junk. But that no longer appears to be the case.

Controllers on the ground directed the station's inhabitants to patch the hole with tape. After the simple repair, the station—humanity's only off-world habitat—is fully functional and there's no danger to the crew, NASA said.

But according to the Russian space agency, the hole might have come from someone deliberately drilling through the thin hull of the Soyuz resupply capsule that, at the time NASA detected the leak, was attached to the Russian side of the station.

"There were several attempts at drilling," Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian Ruscosmos space agency, said in televised comments on Sept. 4. "What is this: a production defect or some premeditated actions?"

The mystery began when controllers in Houston and Moscow detected a slight drop in the station's internal air pressure. The whole crew—three Americans, a German and two Russians—was asleep at the time. Controllers waited until the crew awoke to alert them to the problem.

"They were in no danger," Stephanie Schierholz, a NASA spokesperson, told The Daily Beast via email.

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

Controllers in Houston worked with their colleagues in Moscow and the station crew to plug the hole. Cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev "used epoxy on a gauze wipe to plug the hole identified as the leak source," NASA explained.

Meanwhile, controllers restored the station's normal air pressure by releasing oxygen from a Progress supply capsule, one of three spacecraft docked at the station at the time.

Reading news of the leak, observers on Earth immediately suspected "micrometeoroid/orbital debris" or MMOD—a.k.a., space junk—was the cause. But an MMOD strike powerful enough to punch a hole in the station is highly unlikely.

"The space station is the most heavily shielded spacecraft ever flown," Schierholz said. "Critical components, e.g., 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 published photos of the hole. Sure enough, it didn't look like the kind of damage space debris would inflict. "Hmmm, doesn't look like MMOD," tweeted Chris Bergin, managing editor of NASASpaceFlight.com.

Indeed, the hole looked very much like it was drilled. Sloppily. Perhaps by someone with a "wavering hand," as Rogozin said in his televised remarks.

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

It's unclear why one of the station's crew would want to vent their own breathable air into space. It’s unprecedented for a cosmonaut or astronaut, or anyone else associated with any country’s space program, to secretly damage a spacecraft. “There are no earlier instances of sabotage in space history that I can point toward,” Roger Launius, NASA’s former chief historian, told The Daily Beast.

Roscosmos has convened a special commission to investigate the hole. The commission will issue its report in September, the Russian space agency stated. "Measures will be defined to prevent such situations."

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

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

While both American and Russian robotic capsules haul supplies to the International Space Station, at present only Russia's Soyuz capsules are certified to transport people to the station. NASA plans to begin using new capsule designs from Boeing and SpaceX to carry station crew starting in 2019.

Until then, the rest of the world needs Russian capsules. If Moscow grounds Soyuz, it temporarily grounds the whole human race.

NASA insisted it is optimistic the Russians will figure out what went wrong, and prevent it happening again. "Our Russian partners have demonstrated their human and technological resilience many times throughout the history of their efforts in human spaceflight," Schierholz said.

"NASA does not directly oversee Russian quality control," a space industry insider told The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to speak to the press. "The agencies agree to adhere to a set of interface requirements and specifications regarding spacecraft headed for the ISS."

That doesn't necessarily mean the station is in grave danger, even if there is a saboteur out there. It would take a pretty big hole to pose a serious risk.

It can take hours or days for a hole to even have a noticeable effect on the ISS's atmosphere, the insider said. "Small leaks do not immediately endanger a large spacecraft such as the ISS."

But down on the ground, the incident has shaken the Russian public. The country’s largely censored television news rarely admits the government’s mistakes and almost never reports the failings of state agencies. But last week’s ongoing “space detective” story had the state television channels competing to condemn the management of the entire Russian space industry.

“This two-millimeter hole reminded us about a huge hole in Russian space industry,” a Rossia-24 presenter declared on Wednesday, describing previous cases of reckless technical control on the ground. “As usual, everything was covered by Russian 'maybe it will work.'”

With all its oil and gas money, Russia has never managed to produce its own quality cell phone or laptop, but spaceships were something every Russian brought up as an example of national pride. The first human in space, the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, is treated as a national hero. But the years of glory are long gone. The space pride is fading away now. Today, even the Kremlin-loyal news agencies have to admit the obvious: Russia’s space agency is in deep crisis.

The scientific manager of Russian Space Policy Institute, Ivan Moiseyev said on national TV on Wednesday: “We still have spacecraft and cosmodromes, but the incidents caused by stupid mistakes have become systematic.”

And the core question in this mystery keeps coming back: who the hell drilled the hole in Soyuz?

On Tuesday, parliament member Maksim Surayev even speculated that one of the Russian crew members had drilled the hole. “It might be psychologically difficult there, or there was some conflict,” MP Surayev speculated. “Maybe somebody felt bad and tired so much, they drilled that hole to be able to come home sooner.”

Russian cosmonauts and space experts were angry about Surayev’s speculations. “I think it is nonsense to suggest that somebody intentionally damaged the spaceship,” cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko told Tass news agency. “Astronauts could not damage the spaceship, because they are healthy people, both physically and psychologically.”

In Moscow, experts continue debating whom to blame. “It is still unclear who that wavering hand belongs to,” Russia-24 channel’s presenter said and suggested that it might be “somebody in the assembly shop in the town of Krolev, in Moscow outskirts.”

The investigation has now focused on employees at Energia, Russia’s leading rocket-space enterprise.

“One thing clear to the Kremlin is that it is time to reform Roscosmos, but there is a dilemma of globalization: in the current political situation, we cannot buy any space equipment from the corrupt United States,” Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst told The Daily Beast.
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nivek

As Above So Below
That does look like a drilled hole, unless something flew through that wall extremely hot and fast making it appear like it was machined...I don't know if the latter is really possible, but this just doesn't make any sense, the holeisn't big enough to do serious damage unless left unchecked...

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Toroid

Founding Member
That does look like a drilled hole, unless something flew through that wall extremely hot and fast making it appear like it was machined...I don't know if the latter is really possible, but this just doesn't make any sense, the holeisn't big enough to do serious damage unless left unchecked...

...
The article said the capsules are heavily shielded. They would need a very long drill bit to get through all the layers.
 

Toroid

Founding Member
The hole may have down more damage that initially thought.
That hole drilled in Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft may have done more damage than initially thought
The tale of the mysterious hole that turned up on a spacecraft attached to the International Space Station continues to get stranger. In a new report from Russian news group TASS, whoever drilled the hole might have damaged more than just hull itself.

Citing unnamed sources, TASS reports that when the hole was found the crew aboard the ISS conducted a detailed analysis of the damage. One of the tools they used was an endoscope, which they used to see what was on the other side of the hole. When they sent the images and video back to Earth, the Russian space agency discovered damage to a component lying on the other side of the hole. Big yikes.

So, what exactly is damaged besides the hull? Oh, you know, nothing much. Just the anti-meteorite shield that, as its name implies, protects against friggin’ space rocks.

“Traces of drilling have been found not only inside the spacecraft’s living compartment, but also on the screen of the anti-meteorite shield that covers the spacecraft from the outside and is installed 15 millimeters away from the pressure hull,” the source told TASS. “The top of the drill came through the pressure hull and hit the non-gastight outer shell.”

That’s just fantastic, and I’m sure (if true) this is all very comforting for the crew members who have to actually ride this thing back down to Earth in the not-so-distant future. The spacecraft is essentially the crew’s “lifeboat” aboard the space station should anything go catastrophically wrong. Having a hole in the hull of your lifeboat — even a patched hole — is not a great feeling.

The TASS report offers a few other new details about the investigation into where and when the hole was drilled. According to the source, all the components of the spacecraft were photographed during the final assembly process, and no damage is present in those photos. That means the hole was drilled either just before work on the spacecraft was finished or during its lengthy inspection period.

Russia still hasn’t revealed whether it has a suspect in the investigation or any further details as to who might have been responsible. Early reports suggested that the culprit might have already been found internally, but nothing has surfaced since those rumors began to swirl.
 

Toroid

Founding Member
I want to know when there will be bases on the moon.
There seems to be numerous unacknowledged issues with that. From Corey Good's, David Wilcock's & Michael Salla's research the dark side of the moon which they claim looks like Manhattan at night is a neutral zone for races. Warring groups could have bases literally feet from each other. In the movie Moon they had one man attend to the mining equipment. He would work for several years then be replaced with a clone of himself and he figured it out towards the end of the movie. I suspect the script was based on similar events. I believe they were mining helium 3. In David's book The Ascension Mysteries he described an Ancient race that built an enormous underground base on the moon and loaded their consciousness' into a computer. Montes Carpatus is a location on the moon and it anagrams to Satan's computer. There's also ruins from the Ancient Builder Race on and under the surface. David claims that one day they just disappeared from ancient history and evolved into the Blue Avians who reside in a higher octave/frequency/dimension.

I watched a program recently about the dust on the moon somehow getting into the suit of an astronaut and making him extremely ill. It's possible the surface is covered with nanotech as one of many defences. The rumor is they took a nuke to the moon and it was remotely disarmed by residents and we were warned off. Our satellite seems to fall under Draco territory and the Nazi/cabal and later SSP leased the supposed swastika or pentagon shaped facility on the surface that Corey calls Lunar Operations Command (LOC) where they age regress people after their 20 and back service with the SSP.

The Sumerians called the moon Nanna and it was Su'en or Sin in Akkadian. In Latin its Luna and an obscure name is Dilimbabbar. In the Wingmakers (central race) material SIN stands for Sovereign Integral Network and I doubt that's a coincidence of the alterative name. The sun & moon appearing in belief systems throughout history IMO has to do with the logic of the creator in the ratios of their diameters and distances from each other.

David Wilcock: The Ascension Mysteries
WingMakers Glossary
 
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Toroid

Founding Member
The ISS AI bot CIMON is having tantrums. There's a video on the bot in post #54 & a 2 minute video in the link. :eek:
'Be nice': International Space Station bot CIMON likes Kraftwerk and astronauts who are not mean | Daily Mail Online
European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst interacted with CIMON on the International Space Station
  • As Gerst interacts, the artificial intelligence bot follows commands and engages in small talk
  • Gerst asks it to play his favotire song, CIMON plays 'The Man-Machine' by German electronic band Kraftwerk
  • 'Yay! I like your favorite hits too,' CIMON responded, playing the German electronic band
  • But then CIMON doesn't listen to a command to get out of music mode
  • It tells Gerst 'Be nice please,' later adding, 'Don't be so mean please'
cimon.jpg
 

Toroid

Founding Member
A Russian Soyuz rocket successfully launched three astronauts to the ISS after a failed attempt in October.
Russian Soyuz rocket successfully launches three astronauts toward the International Space Station | Daily Mail Online
Soyuz rocket MS-11 successfully launched into space from a cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday
  • American Anne McClain, Canadian David Saint-Jacques and Russian Oleg Kononenko are bound for the ISS
  • Trio undertook the mission after failed launch in October forced astronauts to make an emergency re-entry
  • They will now spend six months on board the station conducting experiments and testing new technology
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Toroid

Founding Member
An astronaut aboard the ISS mistakenly dialed 911. :eek:
Houston, we (don't) have a problem: Astronaut accidentally dials 911 from International Space Station - NY Daily News
It can happen to anyone, gravity or no gravity.

An astronaut accidentally dialed emergency services on Earth as he attempted a phone call from the International Space Station.

Dutch astronaut André Kuipers dialed 9, as even interplanetary communication systems require, and meant to dial “011,” the code for the U.S. But he missed the 0, dialing 911 instead, he explained, as reported by Fortune. He hung up and didn’t redial, but 200 miles away – as in down – a situation had been set in motion.

Mayhem ensued. Alarms sounded. A security team was dispatched to the NASA office the call had been routed through. Then, a virtual welfare check.

The next day Kuipers, got an e-mail: “Did you call 911?” he told a radio program quoted by Newsweek.

Astronauts have been able to phone home for at least a decade, according to Slashgear.com, enabled to VoIP phone service. Wrong numbers are not uncommon, NASA experts said. But it’s not generally a mistaken cry for help.

“Many people have gotten calls from space,” Wayne Hale, a former flight director at NASA’s Mission Control, told NPR.

“You’re carrying your phone around and it’ll ring, and it’ll be the space station,” NASA chief flight director Holly Ridings, told the website Space Answers in 2013. “It’s really actually kind of cool. It never gets old.”
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
They've been able to phone home for at least a decade. The calls are routed through a NASA office.

Here's the ten dollar answer to the two cent question nobody is asking.

Telephone systems that use an entry digit to make calls - dial 9 plus the number - have this problem all too frequently. I have been on many hundreds of service calls because of this. Eventually manufacturers included misdial prevention features in their software such as waiting some period of time to see if additional digits are dialed before routing the call or failing it. Sometimes once a dial plan has been in place it isn't easy to just change that preceding digit. Contemporary systems usually eliminate the need for an access digit, but you still have to configure the dial plan accordingly.

In this case I'd say it's a case of a government system using dated software and/or lax system administration - not unusual at all.

Modern systems which are VoIP and network distributed are a bear when it comes to configuring 911. Not to avoid accidentally dialing 911 as much as configuring location services. Where do the first responders go when somebody dials 911? You can automate a lot of it but in the end it comes down to a lot of manual coordination with PSAP. Been there, done that ad nauseum.

And just to belabor the point, if you realize that you have dialed 911 accidentally just hang on and own up to it. I can guarantee that I have dialed 911 more times than most thousand people you know and the folks answering the phone are almost always polite and it won't be a problem.
 

Toroid

Founding Member
Russian Soyuz rocket launched three astronauts to the ISS.
We have lift-off! Russian Soyuz rocket successfully launches three astronauts to the ISS | Daily Mail Online
A Soyuz rocket successfully blasted into space this morning from Kazakhstan
  • NASA's Nick Hague, Christina Koch and Russian Alexey Ovchinin blast off today
  • The two men were on Soyuz that failed minutes after launch back in October
  • They both escaped unharmed, and say they are confident about the new mission

www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1sMTOEnqcc
 
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