On Wednesday, the occupants of the space station heard the sound of an impact on the station * no damage was found
A small piece of space junk crashed into the side of the International Space Station on Wednesday, causing no damage but startling the station's two occupants with a metallic crushing noise. A senior official in the Russian space agency said this morning, after two days the Russians denied the claim of the collision and said that the sound came from one of the instruments inside the spacecraft.
Officials say American astronaut Michael Powell and fellow Russian cosmonaut Alexander Clary are safe despite the mishap, which does not appear to have affected the station or their plans to celebrate Thanksgiving.
A spokesman for the Russian Space Forces, an arm of the Russian military that tracks Russian satellites but also monitors the space station, says the station collided with a piece of space debris.
The spokesman, who asked the AP news agency not to identify him, said that the space forces located an object flying close to the station's orbit and determined that it was such a small object that it could not cause damage to the station.
Powell said he heard something that "sounded like someone trying to inflate and deflate a tin can." The noise lasted about a second and it was indeed immediately identified by Poel as a hit to the station.
Russia: The strange noise heard on Wednesday at the space station was not the result of an external collision
28/11/2003
Senior Russian space agency officials protested Thursday, 27/11/03 the claim that an object had struck the exterior of the outer space station on Wednesday morning. According to them, the strange sound originated from one of the devices on board the station.
American astronaut Michael Powell reported Wednesday morning to the control center that he heard a short crushing sound as if something had hit the station. External tests showed that no damage was caused and that the sound was probably coming from a device inside the station.
Additional tests show that there was no collision," said the spokesman for the control center near Moscow. Powell and his Russian teammate Alexander Clary had finished breakfast when they heard the voice from the back of the station's Russian component, which houses the crew's sleeping, galley and toilet area.
"A sound was heard, similar to that of crushing a can. It took about a second," said Sergey Gorbanov, spokesman for the Russian space agency Rasavicosmos, to the NTV television station. "We used external cameras and the team checked the suspicious area from the inside and no damage was found. The noise is almost certainly related to some type of equipment inside the station."
The Russian news agency Interfax quoted a spokesman for the space agency as saying that the sound may have come from a fan that had already made such noises before.
The US statement that faulty air and water monitors on the station jeopardize the safety of the crew and they have been accompanying Powell and Callery since they began their 200-day mission a month ago.
Russian officials dismissed the concerns. Russia has launched all manned launches and cargo launches to the space station since the Columbia disaster. Before the mission, Powell said that he felt safe despite the concerns and also said that the station was in "excellent condition".
The occupants of the space station heard the noise of an impact on the station yesterday * no damage was found
27/11/03
The two crew members of Hal International Station reported yesterday, Wednesday, 26/11/03, about a sudden noise of metal crushing as if something had hit the outside of the station, however tests done so far have not been able to locate any damage. The incident happened at 7:59 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time (09:59 a.m. Israel time).
Astronaut Michael Powell told NASA's control center that it sounded like someone had hit the back of the station's Russian component, which houses the crew's bedrooms, kitchen, toilets and bathroom.
"It sounds like someone is trying to expand and compress a metal box," Powell told the control center. "It was a bad one that lasted about a second. It sounds like an injury or something." His Russian colleague, Alexander Kaleri, claims that he heard nothing.
Reports from a month ago said that some NASA experts warned that the environmental monitoring and health maintenance systems on the station had reached a point where the station was becoming unsafe for the astronauts. NASA has been under the microscope for safety since the Columbia disaster.
The astronauts, with the help of a team of engineers following from the ground, used the video camera located on the end of the station's 17 meter long robotic arm to examine the outside of the station where the sound came from, but were unable to locate any damage. "All systems are fine," NASA spokesman Rob Navias said. "All the data from the American wing and the Russian wing show that all the systems are working regularly."
Before Powell and Clary took off in a Soyuz-type spacecraft for a 200-day stay at the station, NASA officials, who had just marked the third year of manning the station, said that the station was in reasonable condition.
The station is a joint project of NASA with Russia, Japan and Canada, and the cost of its construction is estimated at 95 billion dollars. It was first manned in 2000 with the hope that it would mark the beginning of a permanent human presence in space.
