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Hiccup In Space: Orbital Sciences ISS Docking Delayed By Days
Reuters has a quick report that "[a] software glitch will delay Orbital Sciences' trial cargo ship from reaching the International Space Station until Tuesday, officials said on Sunday. The company's Cygnus capsule, which blasted off Wednesday from Virginia for a test flight, had been scheduled to reach the station on Sunday.
... Orbital Sciences said it had found the cause of the data discrepancy and was developing a software fix. ... The next opportunity for the capsule to rendezvous and dock with the station will be on Tuesday." The WSJ has a more detailed article, and notes "The mission is a challenge for Orbital, which has invested more than five years and about $500 million of its own funds to develop a commercial-cargo capability. But it also presents a dramatic test of NASA's plans to outsource to industry all U.S. resupply missions to the space station. The agency has paid Orbital about $285 million to spur development of the Cygnus and Antares rocket system."
There's a data link between the ISS and docking vehicles. A new version of that was developed recently. Here's the presentation on that. But it doesn't seem to be operational yet. NASA has been talking about the new C2V2 system for years, and commercial spacecraft were supposed to be designed to use it. But it's not ready yet.
So Space-X and Orbital Sciences had to also develop a temporary capability to use the old automated docking system, which, I think, is derived from the Soviet-era Kursk system.
I worked on this program a few years ago. This doesn't shock me at all. It was a clusterfuck from beginning to end. OSC managers had no clue how to do software development on this kind of program. OSC is mostly a testament to value of lobbying over competence. This is also in line with how things have gone with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiting_Carbon_Observatory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_(satellite) Here is the really good one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DART_(satellite) Orbital science crashed two satellites trying something almost identical in 2005!