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Posted by admin on Friday, April 23, 2004 - 06:12 AM

The second of four gyroscopes used to keep the International Space Station steady in orbit has failed.
If a third gyroscope breaks down - and one has shown signs of suffering from lubrication problems - the crew will have to use rocket thrusters to stabilise the outpost. There is only a limited supply of fuel onboard. But NASA maintenance manager Mike Suffredini says: "We are not dealing with a safety issue." The fault occurred on Wednesday, a day after a new crew arrived at the ISS and was made public late on Thursday. The problem is not actually with the gyroscope itself, called CMG-2, but with the system used to control it. Each of the gyroscopes weighs 227 kilograms and spins 6500 times per minute to help keep the ISS in the correct position in orbit. Multiple failure In a radio communication on Thursday, mission controllers told the crew: "If you guys checked the caution-and-warning panel today, you'll see CMG-2 has failed. What's happened is the RPC that's powering CMG-2 has tripped, multiple times in fact." Subscribe to New Scientist for more news and features Related Stories Year-long space station trips rejected 20 April 2004 Space station mission targets science 16 April 2004 Space junk raises fears for ISS 18 February 2004 For more related stories search the print edition Archive Weblinks International Space Station, NASA Human Spaceflight, NASA NASA says it should be possible to repair the problem by replacing the faulty module during one of a handful of spacewalks planned by the station's incoming crew Gennady Padalka and Michael Fincke. The first broken gyroscope, called CMS-1, stopped working completely in 2002. This will have to be replaced, not repaired. The large size of the instrument means only NASA's space shuttle can carry the replacement into orbit. But the shuttle fleet has been grounded since the Columbia disaster and will not fly again until 2005. Other recent maintenance troubles aboard the ISS include a mystery noise compared to metal being bent out of shape. This was first reported in November 2003, but a spacewalk aimed at finding the source had to be cut short in February. In January, crewmembers discovered a ruptured hose responsible for a slight loss of air pressure within the station.

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