One Hard Shift

Wow...that was a hard shift. As i walked into the control room to start my sixth shift of the mission i knew it was going to be different than the previous five. Sometimes you can tell by the look on the person you are relieving how things have gone and how things will go. Lisa just laughed when i walked in.

Well our attitude control system was having issues and we didn't quite know why it was having problems. We attempted to provided non-propulsive attitude to the mated stack, but quickly learned that we couldn't. It turns out that the most likely cause of our issues was the atmosphere. Believe it or not, ISS is flying in an atmosphere...We have been having solar storms recently, which tend to cause the atmosphere to expand about the earth. When the atmosphere expands more and more molecules hit the station causing it to do weird things. If you looked outside this morning, you'll notice it is quite foggy. The air is a little bit thicker...Somewhat similar for space when there is solar activity. This expanded atmosphere puts more drag on the station causing it to turn in ways we don't want it to. These forces are absorbed by our Control Moment Gyroscopes, which is our source of non-propulsive attitude control. At some point, the CMGs can't absorb any more forces and we can't use the CMGs for attitude control anymore...we need propulsive attitude control.

Well, since the Discovery is visiting us, we asked politely to have the orbiter hold attitude control overnight for us. The kindly obliged. How nice of them!

Now, tonight, i had the task of figuring out what to do next. With the help of our engineering support we developed a plan that we put in place for the next shift to execute. After hours of coordination between the shuttle flight control team, the russians, some payloads people in alabama, and our engineering counterparts we developed a solid plan. I hope that plan I put in place will work...i might even wake up early to see how well it works. We do have a backup plan in place in case our first plan doesn't work.

I earned my paycheck tonight. It was a tough shift, but that's what i've been trained for...to work through adversity and persevere.
Space business is HARD.
Space business is cool.
I love my job!