Disaster practically struck the International Space Station final week when a Russian module unexpectedly fired its thrusters shortly after docking. A retired area engineer is now sounding the alarm, saying NASA’s security tradition is exhibiting indicators of decay and that an impartial investigation is critical.

James Oberg isn’t one to carry again.

The retired “rocket scientist” and mission controller labored at NASA from 1975 to 1997, the place he served as an knowledgeable on orbital rendezvous. His expansive data of the Russian and Chinese area applications has led him to testify earlier than Congress on a number of events, and his 2002 ebook, Star-Crossed Orbits, uncovered the shortcomings that existed within the U.S.-Russian relationship whereas the ISS was underneath growth.

Naturally, the current incident with the ISS caught Oberg’s consideration, prompting him to put in writing a guest post for IEEE Spectrum.

“While the proximate cause of the incident is still being unravelled, there are worrisome signs that NASA may be repeating some of the lapses that lead to the loss of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttles and their crews,” he wrote. “And because political pressures seem to be driving much of the problem, only an independent investigation with serious political heft can reverse any erosion in safety culture.”

Indeed, it’s arguably probably the most severe incident to have occurred on the International Space Station. On July 29, Russia’s Nauka module efficiently docked on the orbital outpost, and for some time all appeared properly. As cosmonauts labored to combine the newly arrived module, nevertheless, Nauka’s thrusters started to fireplace, inflicting the area station to roll backwards at a price of 0.5 levels per second. No one knew this was occurring till an on-duty flight controller at NASA seen the station’s altering orientation. Thrusters on the ISS labored to counter the sudden propulsion, and at last, after Nauka’s thrusters abruptly stopped, management was restored.

NASA insists that astronauts aboard the ISS had been by no means in any hazard, however as Oberg writes: “How close the station had come to disaster is an open question, and the flight director humorously alluded to it in a later tweet that he’d never been so happy as when he saw on external TV cameras that the solar arrays and radiators were still standing straight in place.” Oberg is discovering no humor in any of this, particularly when contemplating that this incident resulted within the first-ever declaration of a “spacecraft emergency” within the station’s historical past.

The ISS appears to be okay, however stresses attributable to the sudden rotation may have affected the modules, assist girders, photo voltaic arrays, radiator panels, and robotic arms. Still, the precise particulars of what occurred that day usually are not but absolutely identified. The media has “depicted teams of specialists manually directing on-board systems into action, but the exact actions taken in response still remain unclear—and probably were mostly if not entirely automatic,” Oberg writes. That NASA initially reported a spin of 45 levels and never the precise spin of 540 levels isn’t a great look, he argues.

As Oberg additionally factors out, the area company, as a substitute of talking critically in regards to the incident, is as a substitute reminding everybody of the awesomeness that’s the working relationship between NASA and Roscosmos. The emphasis on sustaining a great relationship with Moscow—so, politics—seems to be getting in the best way of security. But what’s additionally getting in the best way of security, he says, is, paradoxically sufficient, a dearth of great incidents in current historical past.

“The bureaucratic instinct to minimize the described potential severity of the event needs cold-blooded assessment,” Oberg writes. “Sadly, from past experience, this mindset of complacency and hoping for the best is the result of natural human mental drift that comes when there are long periods of apparent normalcy.” To which he provides: “The NASA team has experienced that same slow cultural rot of assuming safety several times over the past decades, with hideous consequences.”

Oberg mentioned a complacent tradition existed at NASA within the years main as much as the 1986 Challenger catastrophe, a time when he labored at Mission Control. Team members had “noticed and begun voicing concerns over growing carelessness and even humorous reactions to occasional ‘stupid mistakes,’ without effect,” writes Oberg. An analogous “mental drift” took maintain within the late Nineteen Nineties throughout joint U.S.-Russian operations on Mir and through early ISS flights, he says.

NASA headquarters, or another larger workplace, ought to intervene to “reverse the apparent new cultural drift,” Oberg writes. He is asking for an impartial investigation into the incident to find out the precise trigger and to show the decision-making that befell at NASA that allowed Nauka to dock—a module that Russia was unable to disarm within the occasion of an emergency.

Like NASA, Roscosmos has additionally downplayed the incident. Sergei Krikalev, the director of crewed area applications at Roscosmos, mentioned an investigation will likely be launched to evaluate the bodily impression of the mishap on the ISS, however the extent of this investigation isn’t identified. It seems that each NASA and Roscosmos are hoping to brush this incident underneath the carpet, however as Oberg factors out, it ought to function a a lot wanted wake-up name.