A female American astronaut allegedly purposely damaged a $500 million Russian-built spacecraft because she was lovesick and wanted to go back home to planet Earth.
Texan Serena Aunon-Chancellor, 47, stands accused by Roscosmos, Russia’s space agency, of maliciously drilling a hole in its Soyuz MS-09 vehicle, docked with the International Space Station (ISS), because she wanted to go home over “a fight with her boyfriend.”
In June 2018, along with astronauts Sergey Prokopyev of Russia and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, Aunon-Chancellor had completed a two-day journey in the Soyuz MS-09 vehicle to the ISS as part of a “ISS Expedition 56.” They were scheduled to remain in space for six months.
But two months into the mission, a two millimeter hole was discovered in the vehicle.
“Left unchecked, the small hole would have depressurized the (International Space Station) in two weeks,” according to a report in Ars Technica.
Russian media reports on a completed investigation by Roscamos say it blamed Aunon-Chancellor for the hole, claiming she drilled it herself “in an attempt to expedite her return to earth.”
She suffered “an acute psychological crisis… due to stress after an unsuccessful romantic relationship with another crew member” and “wanted to descend to Earth as quickly as possible.”
“(The hole) was actually drilled by the American astronaut Serena Aunon-Chancellor,” wrote Russian analyst Vadim Lukashevich, citing “a nervous breakdown under extreme stress.
“Experts concluded that the hole had been drilled in the spacecraft’s hull from the inside,” reported Russia’s state news service, TASS. “Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin announced in September 2019 that the agency was aware of the origin of the hole, but would not make the information public” per an agreement with NASA.
The U.S. Space Agency NASA disputes the charges, calling them “false” and stating they “lack any credibility.”
Who is Serena Aunon-Chancellor?
Profile:
Serena Aunon-Chancellor is the first Cuban-American in space, according to NASA.
She wanted to become an astronaut when she saw a space shuttle launch during school. As an undergraduate, she majored in electrical engineering. While going through medical school, she knew that she wanted to work for NASA, so she worked through a combined residency program in Internal Medicine and Aerospace Medicine.
According to the Society of United States Air Force Flight Surgeons, in 2009, she was awarded the Julian Ward award, which is given each year in memory of the first Air Force flight surgeon to lose his life in an aircraft acciden. During a 2010-2011 expedition to Antarctica, she was a member of a four-person reconnaissance team looking for meteorites, successfully finding several specimens, according to a NASA Antarctic Meteorite newsletter.
As of 2017, there were 9 living astronauts born in Indiana, one of which was Aunon-Chancellor, according to the Indianapolis Star.
In 2018, NASA announced that it would send Astronaut Jeanette Epps to the ISS, making Epps the first Black woman to live and work aboard the station for a long-duration mission. However, NASA later announced that Aunon-Chancellor would take her place in a June 2018 expedition, according to the Daytona Times.
Later in 2018, while on that expedition, she helped receive a commercial shipment that arrived at the ISS. She guided the space station’s robot arm to bring in the shipment. In 2020, she was the lead author of a study on treating Venous Thrombosis (blood clots) during Spaceflight, according to Space.com.