A major power shortage at the International Space Station (ISS) has delayed this week’s SpaceX supply run.
SpaceX was supposed to launch a shipment yesterday, but an old power-switching unit malfunctioned at the space station on Monday and knocked two power channels offline.
The six remaining power channels are working normally, NASA said on Tuesday, adding that the station and its six astronauts are safe.
Photo: AP
However, because of the hobbled solar power grid, the SpaceX launch is off until at least tomorrow.
NASA wants to replace the failed unit to restore full power, before sending up the SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule.
The breakdown has left the station’s big robot arm outside with one functioning power channel instead of two.
Two power sources are required — one as a backup — when the robot arm is used to capture visiting spacecraft like the Dragon.
Flight controllers are to use the robot arm to replace the bad unit with a spare later this week, saving the astronauts from going out on a spacewalk.
There is no rush for the delivery. Northrop Grumman launched supplies two weeks ago.
Solar wings collect and generate electricity for the entire space station. Any breakdown in the critical system can cut into power and affect operations.
SpaceX is still investigating last month’s fiery loss of its new Dragon capsule designed for astronauts.
Six weeks after a successful test flight without a crew to the space station, the crew Dragon was engulfed in flames during a ground test.
SpaceX was in the process of firing the capsule’s thrusters on a test stand. The April 20 accident — which occurred right before or during the firing of the launch-abort thrusters — sent thick smoke billowing into the sky.
SpaceX and NASA have offered few details. The accident is sure to delay launching a crew Dragon with two NASA astronauts on board. SpaceX had been aiming for a summertime flight.
The company still needs to conduct a launch-abort test, before astronauts strap in. The Dragon that flew last month was supposed to be used for this test next month.
Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country’s largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century BC. Archeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city “almost by chance” after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020. Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120m of tunnel carved out of the rock. However, that is only a fraction of the site’s estimated 900,000m2 area, which would make it the largest underground city in Turkey’s
As Paris hosts the Summer Olympics, undocumented Chinese sex worker Hua says increased police patrols are threatening her livelihood. “I really feel under pressure, I’m constantly scared. Every day, there are police checks,” the 55-year-old said, using a different name so as not to be recognized. “So I go out less and less to work.” About 40,000 people — the overwhelming majority women — sell or are exploited for sex in France, according to government and charity estimates. Under French law, selling sex is allowed, but it is illegal to exploit someone or pay for sex, placing the criminal responsibility on pimps and
NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has made what could be its most astonishing discovery to date: possible signs of ancient life on the Red Planet. The six-wheeled robotic explorer came across an intriguing, arrow-shaped rock dubbed “Cheyava Falls” that might harbor fossilized microbes from billions of years ago, when Mars was a watery world. Perseverance on Sunday last week drilled into the enigmatic rock to collect a core sample, as it traversed Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley. The samples carefully stowed beneath the rover’s belly are destined to eventually return to Earth, where they would undergo more comprehensive analysis. “Cheyava Falls is the
Judith Monarrez crumpled onto her kitchen floor and wept when the news arrived in an e-mail: Gizmo, her pet dog missing for nine years, had been found alive. Monarrez was 28 and living with her parents in 2015 when Gizmo, then two years old, slipped past a faulty gate in the backyard of their home in Las Vegas. The decade that followed brought a lot of change. Monarrez, now 37, moved into her own home, earned a master’s degree in English and began her teaching career in higher education. Throughout the years, she never stopped trying to find Gizmo, Monarrez said. Now, she was