The International Space Station was rocked by computer communications trouble on Wednesday, the latest problem the first space shuttle mission of the year has faced after a tear in a thermal blanket that occurred during launch.
On Tuesday, a glitch occurred in Russian computers that control the International Space Station鈥檚 critical oxygen and water supplies, and ground controllers were unable to fix the problem throughout much of Wednesday. But communications with the systems have now resumed, NASA spokesmen said.
鈥淭hey had a problem with those computers going off-line overnight,鈥� NASA spokesman Bill Jeffs said.
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The first such mishap of its kind raised concerns the mission might have to be cut short. But now 鈥渢hey have reestablished communications鈥� with the module and Russian central computers, Jeffs said.
鈥淭he Russians report that they think it is a power problem and not a software problem鈥� that triggered the potentially problematic glitch, Jeffs said.
Indeed, the Russians believe the glitch with the Russian computers on board the ISS was probably caused by a solar panel installed by US astronauts, a Russian space construction firm said on Thursday.
鈥楶owerful source鈥�
鈥淩ussian specialists believe that the new solar panel installed by the Atlantis astronauts during their spacewalk could be the origin (of the breakdown),鈥� said Irina Gomenyuk, a spokeswoman for Energia, which designed much of the station.
This 鈥渘ew powerful source of energy caused a malfunction of sensitive system elements鈥� on the Russian and American segments of the station, in particular of the electrical supply system, Gomenyuk was quoted as saying by ITAR-TASS.
ISS flight director Holly Ridings added that the Russians were able to re-establish communications with the central computer on board the Russian segment of the ISS.
鈥淭hey have been able to send commands to the system in the service module 鈥� It looks they made a lot of progress overnight (and) we鈥檒l talk to them as we have been doing all night through the next couple of days to understand what caused the issue,鈥� she said.
Seven-hour spacewalk
Another NASA spokesman, John Ira Petty, said the problem had not been entirely fixed by 1255 GMT on Thursday, but that the communications reconnect was 鈥渃ertainly a step in that direction鈥� after many hours of interruption. 鈥淭here is some cleaning up left to do after a situation like this as you can imagine. But we are optimistic,鈥� he added.
Two US astronauts spent more than seven hours outside the International Space Station on Wednesday working on its solar power panels as part of a huge expansion of the station鈥檚 generation capacity.
Pat Forrester and Steve Swanson, who arrived at the ISS on Sunday aboard the space shuttle Atlantis, undertook the second of a total four spacewalks for construction and inspection purposes during Atlantis鈥檚 13-day mission in space.
The two worked 90 minutes on a 73-metre older solar array on the starboard side of the ISS, 鈥渇luffing鈥� it, NASA said, to ease full retraction on Thursday.
But they only succeeded in folding up 13 of the unit鈥檚 31.5 array bays before NASA took them off the job.
Surgical staples
The next spacewalk is scheduled for Friday, during which astronauts will try to repair a damaged insulation blanket on the shuttle. The blanket peeled back after lift-off at the rear of the shuttle, exposing a small underlying area that theoretically could be hazardous to the graphite structures underneath as the craft returns to Earth.
NASA aims to have the astronauts pin the blanket back into place with surgical staples.
The space agency has played down concerns over the tear to the thermal blanket since it was noticed after last Friday鈥檚 launch.
But such damage is a concern after the Columbia shuttle disintegrated as it returned to Earth in February 2003. This was due to breaks in its heat shield caused by foam insulation peeling off its fuel tank and striking a wing during the launch.
All seven astronauts aboard perished and the shuttle programme was put on hold for about two and a half years while the space agency sought to overcome the problem, modifying the external fuel tank and setting procedures to check the heat shield while in orbit.
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