A module misfire temporarily knocked the station out of alignment.

On Thursday, the Nauka laboratory module, designed by Russian space agency Roscosmos, successfully docked with the International Space Station. However, after docking with the station, an unknown accident caused the module to fire its thrusters while attached, causing a “tug-of-war” effect that temporarily knocked the station out of alignment.

The ISS needs to remain at a very particular angle in the interest of the astronauts aboard, as well as to properly communicate with ground control. When the station’s angle was altered, ground control temporarily lost contact with the astronauts for about 11 minutes. Even after communication was restored, it took approximately an hour to restore the station’s proper orientation. Thankfully, no astronauts were injured, nor was any important equipment damaged. NASA and Roscosmos are currently conducting an investigation to determine what caused the Nauka module to fire its thrusters.

“Spaceflight is hard, and when we bring on new capabilities there can be glitches, which is why we prepare and train for these contingencies,” said Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

“Until you exhaust all your contingency plans, that’s when you start to worry and today we just weren’t there,” said Joel Montalbano, head of NASA’s ISS department. He did add that a situation like this is extremely rare, with a thruster misfire only occurring a handful of times in the 20 years the ISS has been in orbit.

Former deputy administrator of NASA Lori Garver described the incident as “a reminder that our lack of insight into our Russian partners capabilities is an uncontrolled risk. I’m not sure we would have allowed one of our commercial partners to dock with (the) station if they had just experienced the problems we heard about with this module in advance.”