The SARJ Situation on the ISS
One of the major achievements ever developed by man is the International Space Station, the only space station in orbit with people solving problems and people learning to work together as a team—on an international basis—with better results than on Earth. And now another problem is being worked on, originally found last October by spacewalker Dan Tani when he had found “metal to metal scraping” on the ISS’s Solar Alpha Rotary Joint. Massively important, they hold the system that was made to rotate the solar arrays, with the crewmembers watching the damage until it can be fixed, with ground controllers using it as little as possible.
The wonder of it all are the 124-kilowatts that will be produced by the solar electricity generating system once everything is completed. Once everything is in place for the solar array, the station’s power demands will be met. The only problem will be the strain of Japan’s Kibo module once it is delivered on May 31st, requiring the entire solar array to be fixed and running 100% before both Kibo and Europe’s Columbus segment can do their scientific work. With three spacewalks prepared for the next mission, a new Trundle Bearing Assembly will be installed in place of last December’s repair job. Another job will be the testing of a “possible repair technique” that NASA has designed to cover the SARJ’s damaged track, utilizing a lubricant followed by the scraping if its grit. This will become a routine maintenance by crewmembers if it works to prevent the damage from occurring, tedious yet affecting the lifetime of the ISS. The future aspects of the joint is demonstrating to NASA that newly designed moving parts will need to be as strong and durable as possible, while simultaneously able to be repaired. The
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 8:45 pm and is filed under 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.
