NASA to put off fixing space station glitch

The loss of a gyroscope on the International Space Station poses no threat to the orbiting outpost, a NASA official said on Thursday, adding the space agency planned no immediate servicing mission.

The gyroscope shut down on Wednesday after a circuit breaker popped. Its failure left the space station with just two of its four positioning gyroscopes working.

“We don’t see an immediate need to go change (the circuit breaker),” space station program manager Bill Gerstenmaier told reporters during a teleconference.

Only two of the devices were needed to keep the station properly positioned in orbit, he said.

The breaker is located outside the station in a truss assembly and would require a spacewalk for servicing. The failure is believed to be due to a design flaw, as about 12 other identical components had failed over the years, Gerstenmaier said.

If another gyroscope should fail, the station would automatically switch over to using its thrusters for alignment. Using the small rockets would eat into the station’s limited supply of fuel.

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NASA wants to conserve propellant — as well as oxygen, air purifiers, water and food — to build up a stockpile of supplies in case space shuttle astronauts have to use the station as an emergency shelter, a plan proposed by the board that investigated the shuttle Columbia accident.

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Shuttle flights, which have been on hold since the February 2003 accident that killed seven astronauts, are scheduled to resume in May. The station’s circuit breaker failure and loss of the gyroscope would have no impact on the shuttle flight schedule, Gerstenmaier said.

Columbia was destroyed as it flew through Earth’s atmosphere for landing. NASA did not realize the ship had a hole in its wing, caused by a piece of foam insulation that had fallen off the shuttle’s fuel tank during launch.

Even if engineers had realized the danger to Columbia, the crew, which was on a free-flying research mission, had no place to go. After the accident, NASA decided to fly shuttles to the space station for use as a haven in case of trouble.