NASA has planned an emergency walk with two of its astronauts to fix a major fault in their system. Two astronauts of the international space agency will be venturing out of the International Space Station to replace a non-performing computer, a part of a computer pair that controls significant U.S systems on the ISS.
After around one and a half years, NASA is sending its astronauts on an emergency spacewalk. According to Reuters, flight engineer Jack Fischer and commander of the International Space Station, Peggy Whitson will be taking a walk out of the station on Tuesday to fix a failed computer. The duo will be replacing it with a functional one and it is vital for the functioning of the ISS as the computer in question is one of the two computers that control the U.S systems of the ISS.
Notably, the computer stopped working on Saturday and the ISS had to take recourse to a backup system to get things working. The astronauts used the backup system to send commands to various equipment connected with the ISS including radiators, solar power system and cooling loops. Also, the failure did not cause any problem to the ISS crew.
In a statement, NASA said that the crew that consists of five members from Russia, France and the U.S. were in no danger, ABS-CBN News has learned. However, the replacement is necessary and thus, the two astronauts will be taking the emergency spacewalk and it is estimated to take around two hours.
Those who do not know, the last time NASA conducted an emergency spacewalk, it was in Dec. 2015 and the purpose was to release the brakes of the mobile transporter located on the arm of a robot. Also, Peggy Whiston has already assembled and tested an electronics box that will serve as the replacement of the failed computer.
It is worth mentioning here that the failed computer was installed on March 30 during a spacewalk.
