NASA battles failure of space station computer

Houston, June 15: NASA said that a new power feed could be the source of potentially catastrophic computer glitches aboard the 100 billion dollar International Space Station but it hoped the problem would be resolved.

''The new power feed to the Russian segment could be the problem,'' International Space Station programme manager Mike Suffredini told a news briefing at the Johnson Space Center.

Suffredini said the Russians would try to reboot the system when the station passed over Russian ground stations today.

The two Russian cosmonauts aboard will work on the problem with their controllers on the ground through the wee hours of the morning.

Suffredini said he suspected the computers would be ''up and down'' over the next few days before the glitches were finally sorted out and they were fully operational again. The computers are German-built but have Russian software.

''I feel like we are well on our way,'' Suffredini said.

The computer glitches began Wednesday shortly after a newly installed solar wing panel began producing power. The panel was brought to the station by the US space shuttle Atlantis.

NASA has said that a failure to resolve the problem could result in it temporarily evacuating the space station, a 16-nation project which has been continuously manned since November 2, 2000.

That unlikely worst-case-scenario would entail the three space station astronauts, including NASA's newly arrived Clayton Anderson, leaving in the escape ship, a Russian Soyuz capsule.

The Atlantis crew would return to Earth on the shuttle.

The US space agency has also made contingency plans to keep Atlantis attached to the station for an extra day to help steer the massive complex if the Russian computers, which control navigation, continue to malfunction.

Work continued yesterday on the retraction of the second half of an older solar wing panel that must be moved before the new array can rotate and track the sun for full power.

Spacewalking astronauts Patrick Forrester and Steven Swanson helped guide the old wing into its storage box on Wednesday. Their crewmates James Reilly and John ''Danny'' Olivas are due to finish the job during a spacewalk today.

Reilly and Olivas also are scheduled to repair a bit of protruding insulation near the rear of the shuttle. A corner of the blanket tore loose during Atlantis' launch six days ago, potentially exposing inner layers of the shuttle's surface to superheated gases on re-entry.

NASA had already extended Atlantis' mission from 11 to 13 days and added a fourth spacewalk to make sure there was enough time to fix the blanket and retract the old solar wing.

Reuters

Related Stories