Calling 911 from NASA’s Space Station
On Wednesday, all three Russian computer nodes, in the International Space Station, have developed a failure of the critical computer systems which supports a critical part of the Russian station modules. This forces the station and the gyroscopes to be completely dependent on the United States sytems and the Atlantis Space Shuttle, currently docked to NASA’s space station in support of mission STS-117. According to the International Space Station manager, Mike Suffredini, this could force the entire crew to leave the station for safety reasons. At the present time, the station construction managers are inspecting the solarcell array that was installed by shuttle astronauts this week, in order to see if they were the problem. If so, then disconnecting them to reboot the computers would solve the problem.
PreviouslyRussian station computers have failed on the ISS but not all three computer nodes at once, which are now unable to reset themselves to their original mode. The good news is that the United States is still functioning with their own computers, but there has only been stress testing done for limited configuations on the entire Space Station– not with the entire complex independent sytem. The problem is said to be a fixable one, according to NASA’s Suffredini, who said that “many other alternatives” were available before the crew would be removed as a last resort only.
Earlier today, Pat Forrester and Steve Swanson undertook the second of the four planned spacewalks in order to repair and inspect purposes during the 13th day mission of the Atlantis. Working 90 minutes on a 240-foot older solar array, the two men succeded in folding up 13 of the unit’s 31.5 array bays, while the remaining were planned on being removed today (Thursday) by remote control, according to NASA. The retraction of the P6 leads to better tracking of the sun, which will allow the ISS power generating potention to increase up to 14 kilowatts. This will be enough for European and Japanese space agencies to be installed at a later date in the future, while the P6 structure will be repositioned at a later date by a different shuttle misson.
Also, the two astronautes worked on the Solar Alpha Rotary Joint, which would allow the new solar arrays to follow the sun. The joint was held by restraints which was to be removed in the next spacwalk. The next spacewalk is to be this Friday, with the atronauts trying to repair the damages of the insulation blanket of the Atlantis. NASA plans on having the astronauts pin the blanket back into place with surgical tape.
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 12:49 am and is filed under Public Relations, Space Agency News, Technical Concerns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
