NASA Satellite Un-stranded

Ronnie Coote writes "In March, a previous article mentioned that NASA's latest Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (used for communications between Shuttle, Space Station, ground, etc) had been stranded in a low orbit due to fuel leaking from its tanks. Well, thanks to the hard work of Boeing and NASA boffins, it's now reached geostationary orbit and "expected to fulfill its contractually required 15-year service life". More details from Boeing."

Comments

I would have gotton first post

[isorox]

unfortunatly my first post was routed through this satelite, and got stranded inbetween the tv and 802.11b antennas

RTF Press Release, damn it!

[Observer]

The problem was not a leaking fuel tank. The Boeing press release linked in the /. story (it's only a few hundred words, for pity's sake) says clearly that the problem was that the pressurant (that is, the thing that pushes the fuel out of the tank to the motor) didn't get to the tank, because of a blockage in a valve.

But all kudos to the engineers from Boeing and NASA who worked out what the problem was - quite possibly from fairly subtle clues in the telemetry information or some very careful trial and error experiments - and how to get around it and coax the satellite up to its intended orbit.

Re:RTF Press Release, damn it!

[Tablizer]

But all kudos to the engineers from Boeing and NASA who worked out what the problem was - quite possibly from fairly subtle clues in the telemetry information or some very careful trial and error experiments - and how to get around it and coax the satellite up to its intended orbit.

Probably the geek who suddenly remembered his missing gum pretended like it was lucky guesswork to figure out the segment position and density of the object clogging the gizmo segment he built. Telemetry my ess.

Treknobabble

[Psion]

I suspect they rerouted the EPS conduit from the primary pressure manifold to the secondary navigationdal deflector array and used the resulting graviton flux to trigger a rapid nadion cascade and thereby providing just enough kick to get the whole system back into spec. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought the satellite was named "Voyager."

Technically how?

[lommer]

What I want to know is how did they acomplish all of this? I mean, reprogramming electrical circuits are one thing to reroute and fix remotely, but how do you fix a valve-blockage from several thousand km away!?

My only thought was that they somehow had a completely redundant backup valve and pipe system in anticipation of this exact problem. But when going into space, every gram costs $ so I highly doubt that this was the case. Kudos to them for first figuring out what was wrong in the first place, and then actually being able to do something about it. But really... how the hell did they do that?!

Re:Ok, that really takes the cake for /. grammar

[MalleusEBHC]

Well, since this is /. we have to at least give them some credit for spelling "stranded" correctly.

Another Slashdot Ad.

[Perdo]

This is just another case of slashdot being a mouthpiece for corporate America. The link is to a corporate press release for god sake.

"The TDRS-I recovery effort was an incredible feat that demonstrates the inherent design robustness of our products and the incredible space operation knowledge and experience of our team,"

Blatant advertisement designed to get all us geeks to buy Boeing's satellites instead of Ratheon's or Lockheed's.

Well not me. My billion dollars is going to Alcatel Space. They are an open company that doesn't engage in these slashvertisments. Slashdot is so corporate owned.

(joke)