By Arun Kumar
IANS
Washington : Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams may have to stay yet another additional day in space as a new computer snag may delay the departure of space shuttle Atlantis that will take her back to earth.
As US and Russian flight controllers worked to fully restore computers aboard the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday after a system crash and cameras, computer laptops and some lights on Atlantis were turned off to save energy in case it needed to stay an extra day.
While Atlantis is still docked, its thrusters can help, if needed, to maintain the station's position while computers are down. Gyroscopes on the US side of the space station were also helping maintain orientation, but they can't do the job full time.
US space agency NASA's associate administrator for space operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, called the chances of abandoning the space station because of the computer problem "remote".
"We're still a long way from where we would have to de-man the space station," he said.
In the worst-case scenario, the three astronauts aboard the station, including Sunita's replacement Clayton Anderson, could leave in the escape ship – a Russian Soyuz capsule.
As a precaution, the Soyuz was put on battery power Wednesday for seven hours before one primary and one auxiliary computer system in the Russian modules were rebooted Thursday, allowing the capsule to be returned to station power.
Sunita and six other astronauts are slated to leave Tuesday on board Atlantis, but NASA managers were considering adding a day at the space station to give engineers more time to figure out the problem with the Russian computers.
The addition of a solar array to the space station might be a cause, Gerstenmaier said. Other possibilities include electromagnetic interference and a software problem.
The mission had already been extended from 11 to 13 days to repair a thermal blanket that peeled during launch.
Engineers don't think the damaged section of the thermal blanket, which protects part of the shuttle from the blazing heat of re-entry, would endanger the spacecraft during landing. But it could cause enough damage to require schedule-busting repairs.
NASA has been extra cautious about any problem that could jeopardise a shuttle's re-entry into earth's atmosphere since the 2003 Columbia disaster that killed Indian born Kalpana Chawla and six other astronauts.