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How NASA Kept the ISS Flying While Harvey Hit Mission Control (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In the days before Harvey hit Texas, flight controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center outside of Houston had a decision to make: should they evacuate or ride out the storm at the agency's Mission Control Center? The dilemma wasn't just about the safety of the flight controllers. These personnel are tasked with flying the International Space Station -- a round-the-clock job that can't be done just anywhere. If there's a gap in ground communication, it could put the astronauts in danger. [...] On August 22nd, three days before the storm hit, the mission team was briefed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and decided the best plan was to stay put. They realized that whatever hit Texas would likely hit Round Rock, too, which is located outside of Austin. Plus, Harvey's real danger looked to be the water rather than the winds. The building containing the Mission Control Center is designed to withstand flooding incredibly well. But the team also knew they had to prepare. "Where you don't want to find yourself is just a single flight controller in any position who can't leave because there's no one to replace them," says Scoville. So the flight controllers were told to come into work early and to make sure they had a way to both enter and leave the center safely. Many showed up Friday night with "big, monstrous climbing backpacks," says Scoville. Meanwhile, cots were set up in a nearby room and in a building that serves as an astronaut quarantine facility, where astronauts quarantine before launch to avoid getting sick in space. "We have training rooms that are a mere copy of the flight control room," says Scoville. "They have the same consoles and same screens, but we turned off the lights and put some cots in there. It was interesting to see these rooms usually lit up with all these screens blacked out for people to sleep." Throughout the weekend, Mission Control operated with the bare minimum essential personnel needed to keep the ISS working safely. Normally, flight controller teams work in nine-hour shifts, swapping out three times a day. During the storm, only about six flight controllers worked each shift, and some stretched their shifts to 12 hours. Because the flooding made the roads impassable, everyone had to spend a couple of nights at NASA.
According to the linked article on theVerge, Hunstville, AL is the backup control room. Should a nearby hotel in Round Rock, be insufficient.
12 hour shifts managing not only the lives of 6 people, but also ~$150 billion in costs (not including human lives currently onboard), and an internationally coordinated project that has taken damn near 19 years. Imagine being the guy who buffed up and destroyed all of that. Goodbye career.
I hope they gave those folks a couple doses of Modafinil to keep them going. Early, right after waking up. The drug puts you into a mode like when you've got work due soon, and you're not panicked, but you're dead-focused on it--it's the mode your brain goes into when there might be tigers around, but you haven't found a tiger hunting you yet, so you're on high alert so you don't die. You get a headache and you forget about it in 4 seconds, and notice it every hour or so and don't bother getting a Tylenol because you have other shit to do.
Not only does it make the long shift tolerable, but it makes the exhaustion from that kind of overwork go away. Stuff lasts 14 hours, so you take it early because it's not so nice to sleep on (you can, but it's nice to have it out of your system).
I got some for ADHD, but it caused the most severe depression that can exist after a few weeks of daily use. That's not even a listed side-effect, and I had slept... pretty much not at all for a year prior. Amphetamine also causes depression while it's active: I don't sleep for 26 hours and I feel kind of lethargic and dysphoric until the drug wears off--but not fatigued. My psychiatrist finally gave me Strattera instead and it caused serotonin mania at full dose; it's working at the current dose, and I want to try trimming it back a bit to see if I can get more energy and less emotional suppression without a relapse of never-ending insomnia and uncontrollable impulsiveness.
Modafinil, by the way, is prescribed for shift work syndrome. If they're interrupting their circadian rhythm, that's what the drug is for, so says the FDA. A real doctor who can actually give medical advice would have to have a look to make sure they're not taking any drugs with bad interactions; it's a good ask before you put people under this kind of strain.
In my opinion, we should be investigating the viability of statutory availability for certain temporary, high-strain, high-risk situations--disaster response, long-hour surgery, and so forth--because those situations are miserable and mistakes mean people die. If this is a proper and safe tool for these critical situations, then it's ludicrous for us not to use it.
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The main backup is likely to be the Russian control room at RKK Energia. I don't recall whether it has access to the TDRSS system that provides continuous coverage to the ISS, but they can certainly communicate and manage the station from there.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
The first time you mention someone, you should give their full name and job description, e.g. Dr Scoville K. Capsacain III, mission control controller, said ... .
That way readers know who the Holy fucking Mary he is.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Most of the communications with the ISS are done through the TDRSS system, which is up in geosynchronous orbit. That is what gives MCC near continuous communications capabilities to the ISS, no matter where it is in orbit. To make that work, there are a set of ground stations at various points around the globe that have dishes aimed at the (stationary) TDRSS birds. These are then networked back to MCC in Houston.
There is a backup, the russion control centre near Moscow. However, given the construction of the building in Houston, its buttressing against flooding, and the overall situation, camping out in that building was likely the safest place for the controllers to be during the storm and its aftermath.
To me, it's a testament to the design and quality that they were able to maintain connectivity throughout the situation. From that room they are reaching out globally, and were able to do so.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
I thought Moscow was already setup to handle the ISS in case something happened to Houston. The Russians ran Mir for over a decade I'm sure they can handle the ISS for a few days.
Please explain why. And you can be very technical because I helped build that stuff. Oh wait, never mind. go back to complaining how bad the job market is from your parent's basement..
They have to continuously spin the station to aim the cannon so that they can blast the incoming asteroids as soon as they appear, then they need to blast any remaining fragments. Failure to eliminate even a single asteroid could have catastrophic consequences. This requires round-the-clock vigilance.
The station's orbit needs to be boosted from time to time to compensate for slowdown due to friction with the (extremely) thin atmosphere at its orbital altitude. It's also occasionally steered to keep a safe distance between the station and the larger pieces of orbiting space debris. So yes, NASA does in fact "fly" the ISS.
Much of this is to reduce the load on the Astronauts and Cosmonauts on board the ISS. Mission controllers are constantly watching power systems, cooling systems, data systems, the various experiments, and so forth, so that the humans on board can spend as much time as possible on things that can't be done from the ground.
The commands likely range from requesting appropriate sensor data, to tweaking the cooling system, to starting and stopping experiments.
The ISS is an incredibly complex machine, in an extremely hostile environment. It's also a hugely expensive research outpost, with a limited crew. Experiments are booked years in advance, and are tightly scheduled. It's the job of the people on the ground to make sure they happen.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...