International Space Station Gyroscope Fails

b00m3rang writes "Reuters reports that one of the three working gyroscopes that keep the international space station stable and in the right position stopped working, just hours after a new two-man crew moved in for a half-year stay."

Comments

just a spacewalk

[qewl]

All they need to do is a spacewalk out and restart it.

He stressed, however, "We're not dealing with a safety issue," and added it would take several weeks to determine when to schedule the spacewalk.

There are two gyroscopes still functioning, and that is enough to stabilize the station, Suffredini said. If one of these remaining gyroscopes fails, the station will rely on thrusters to keep it steady.

Too bad they can't do that for Hubble too.

Re:just a spacewalk

[angusr]

"There are two gyroscopes still functioning, and that is enough to stabilize the station, Suffredini said. If one of these remaining gyroscopes fails, the station will rely on thrusters to keep it steady."

Too bad they can't do that for Hubble too.

No thrusters on Hubble, of course.

It wouldn't work for Hubble anyway - thrusters are a fairly coarse method of control, resulting it lots of banging and vibration. While on the ISS that would be fine (although some mu-g experiments would probably be upset) on Hubble it would render it unusable until the vibrations have died down after every thrust. Plus, of course, while observations take place they couldn't use the thrusters - and hence the lack of control is going to make those observations pretty hopeless anyway.

If the robot mission to attach a gyro pack to Hubble goes ahead (which I hope it does) then it is likely to have thrusters on it - however, I would suspect that they're not for day-to-day control but to control Hubble when it's re-entered.