Posted on 04/12/2014 6:49:19 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Officials at NASA and SpaceX were working through the weekend to see whether they could still safely rocket a cargo capsule to the International Space Station on Monday, despite the failure of one of the backup computers in the system that helps dock the pod in space.
While workers continued to prepare for a Monday afternoon launch, NASA said a final determination would likely come Sunday afternoon.
The deployment of 5,000 pounds of supplies to the space station by SpaceX’s unmanned Falcon 9 rocket has already been delayed a month because of other technical issues.
NASA said Saturday that engineers must determine whether the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm “has enough redundancy” -- while one component is offline -- to properly catch and hold the supply craft, known as Dragon. The craft would dock on Wednesday if the launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., moves forward as planned.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
And nothing works.
Except the whole "spying on Americans" thing. We got that one nailed!
To be fair, ISS is exposed to elevated levels of radiation, and computers are expected to fail from time to time. The computers are even designed to monitor and report single bit errors (from which they recover automatically and invisibly to the user, thanks to forward error correction.)
also the replacement has been on board sense 2001
Sounds like a new computer needs to be added to the cargo and the launch become a priority.
“... computer capability now found in a pocket calculator...”
You still use one? And that should be: “less than the computer capability once found in a pocket calculator”. You might be able to run the entire Apollo program from a few smart cell phones today.
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