Page 18 of Space Junk: Houston, We Have a Hottie
On our walk to Building Five, I try to focus on the meeting ahead.
But thatkiss.
I shake my head hard. Rose is my friend. I think. And as a friend, I should be indignant on her behalf. I will simply ignore the aftershock panty tingles my downtown is currently experiencing. They must be from the muscle car’s engine. Not the kiss.
My phone vibrates as I scan my badge into the security door after Ian. A text from an unknown number pops up.
BTW, thanks for getting my sister home safely last night.
Sister? Rose is hissister?
The tingles shall not be ignored.
Four
Main Engine Start
Jackie
Sean is not happy.As the Flight Director in charge of the EVA who explains why the EXT-1 is failing, he is the fan that the proverbial shit hits. Everyone is sitting at the table but Sean. While slamming down what must have been his fifth cup of coffee, he mans the slide show of photos Jules was able to take while out on the EVA this morning.
“This was supposed to be a normal maintenance EVA.” He clicks his keyboard hard and the slide changes. “And now we are dealing with this.”
Jules did a good job of focusing in on the bundle of wires running up one of the main panels. Astronauts on EVAs wear special gloves, attached to their space suits. The primary focus of the gloves and suit is to protect astronauts from the pressure and conditions of space. That means bulk. Taking detailed pictures in a giant marshmallow suit is hard work, but Jules has done it and done it well. Small holes can be seen on some of the wires, and one looks so bent that it could be a moment from snapping. That means a meteorite or a piece of space junk hit the ISS.
NASA monitors the orbits of thousands of larger pieces of space junk floating around in the Earth’s orbit. Some of it is man-made—pieces of satellite, tools dropped by astronauts during space walks, and leftover debris from Star Wars tests in space. Then there are natural particles—meteorites. Small meteorites can travel faster than a bullet.
Sean looks around the room. “We knew that EXT-1 was starting to give failures and the thrusters were hit or miss on taking commands, so we switched all power to EXT-2. Unfortunately, during the spacewalk, Astronaut Starr discovered that the fix was not as simple as powering cycling.”
The EXT-MDMs are the external computers set up on the truss of the ISS which control the functionality of station components such as the solar arrays, radiators, cooling loops and other systems.
Ian speaks up. “EXT-2 is running without problems?”
“Yes. EXT-2 is in full working order. That’s why we’re not talking evacuation. We have the CHRONUS group monitoring them.” Sean shifts through more slides and shakes his head. “The station simply got hit in a bad spot.”
The ISS is as large as a football field. And though, in the beginning, a lot of wires had been exposed and running along the exterior of the station, most of them, especially on the US side, have been moved internally. Computer failure due to a space junk hit is relatively low on the probability scale. And in the grand scheme of things, hitting wires isn’t as bad as if the space junk had hit a window or penetrated the hull.
But this is still bad. Not life threatening. At least not yet.
Sean flips to another picture. It shows a small section of thickly insulated wires on the exterior of the ISS.
“Does ADCO anticipate the need for any complicated maneuvers anytime soon?” I ask.
“They’ve conferred with TOPO and Space Command and say we are clear for the foreseeable future. The Russians are also helping,” Sean answers.
Attitude Determination and Control Office manages the station’s orientation and calculates any needed maneuvers to avoid large debris. I’ve worked with them a few times during EVA planning. Trajectory Operations Officer and Space Command are responsible for the station trajectory and maintaining data regarding the station’s orbital position.
Another click on Sean’s computer. “You can see by Starr’s photos that what we think was a tiny meteorite, too small to be picked up by TOPO, hit the space station here.” He points to the center of the screen, where damage to the wires seems localized. “This small section is only about 12 inches long, but there are leads to the US computers in this bundle. We have an old EXT on board the station. We’ll get the crew working on refurbishing it with the parts available so we can swap it out with the damaged one.” Sean looks to Ian and me. “The next spacewalk’s primary task will be the removal and replacement of a data relay box. In the meantime, the EXT-2 is operational and all ISS components are in working order.”
Ian and I look at each other, then nod.
“Listen,” Sean continues, speaking to the room at large now, “I know the EXTs are crucial, vital even to sustaining life on the ISS, but we’re still good. We still have an operational computer, six of the smartest astronauts with degrees in shit I can’t even pronounce, an old computer we can install and wealwayshave the option to depart. But discussion on that is a few failures away.”
The Soyuz “lifeboat” is always docked to the station. If needed, the astronauts can evacuate inside the Russian capsule and clear the station in the event of an emergency. At the moment, we have a few critical failures, but NASA always has more than one fail-safe.
Weshouldbe good.
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