Space Station computer failure

June 18th, 2007

Most of us would have experienced the dreaded ‘blue screen of death’ at some stage. Despite potential loss of data (thank goodness for auto save) it was just a simple case of cursing the PC, flicking the power switch and away you go again. However it’s probably a whole different ball game when your computers start failing in space. That was the situation faced this week on the International Space Station.

International Space Station

There was a slim chance that the space station would have to be abandoned after navigation computers started to malfunction. NASA decided to keep the space shuttle docked with the station for an extra day just in case they had to use it to help steer the massive space station.

Fortunately Russian flight controllers managed to restore two of the three systems on Friday but NASA is still considering leaving the shuttle docked for another day or two just in case!

So the next time your PC dies on you just remember it could be a lot worse than just losing a data file or two!

Source: Reuters