Submission + - NASA Faces International Space Station Crisis
cybrpnk2 writes: NASA is currently (if you'll pardon the pun) faced with a major crisis on the STS-120 flight to the International Space Station. At ISS, one new solar array has metal shavings from an unknown source jamming up the 10-foot diameter rotary gear that enables solar tracking. Meanwhile, a seperate older solar array that was partially re-extended in a new location has ripped and lacks the structural integrity for solar tracking either. An upcoming emergency spacewalk will have an astronaut at the end of a shaky boom applying a metal brace to the fully charged ripped array which he dares not touch directly at risk of electrocution to him or destruction to it. Failure threatens a scheduling trainwreck on upcoming flights to deliver power-hungry European and Japanese laboratory modules before President Bush's mandated 2010 Shuttle retirement.
