Troubles of an old space station

Computer failure points to the challenge of aging equipment.

from the June 15, 2007 edition

Page 2 of 3

Page 1 | 2 | Page 3

Yet to some analysts, such problems are likely to crop up with increasing frequency as time passes. While much attention has focused on the new elements the shuttle has been delivering to the station, those elements are being bolted to a core whose key components have been in orbit since the late 1990s. Some parts exceed their original design lives.

"In many cases, these things work just fine," says Keith Cowing, editor of the on-line service NASA Watch and a former payload-integration specialist with the space station program. "But the system is aging, and it's not always aging smoothly."

He notes, for instance, that the core of the Russian command module was originally built as a replacement element for the Mir space station, which ended its career in 2001. "It was sitting on the ground years before it flew, and it's been up for six or seven years now," he says. "Computers in the US segments use radiation-hardened 386 processors," which today's computers industry has long since left behind. "Who knows what the Russians are using," he says.

The issue of spare parts – at least as it pertains to the US – came up earlier this year in a report from the International Space Station Independent Safety Task Force. It recommended that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration spend $1 billion more than it currently allocates to ensure the station has an adequate supply of spare parts and the transportation needed to get them there. Shuttle managers have noted that toward the end of the decade, when the shuttle program is slated to end, three missions could be dedicated to delivering large quantities of supplies and spares to the station. In addition, the space agency is spending some $500 million to help two start-up US rocketmakers develop vehicles capable of resupplying the station. In addition, the Europeans have been developing an automated transfer vehicle to ship supplies to and from the station. The first is slated for launch aboard an Ariane V rocket next year.

Yet as the ISS program has been pared back over the years, so has its spare-parts program.

1 | Page 2 | 3 | Next Page