CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The pilots on NASA’s last space shuttle flight fixed another one of their main computers Friday after it failed and set off an alarm that awoke the entire crew.
Atlantis’ commander, Christopher Ferguson, said the alarm sounded an hour or so after the four astronauts had gone to bed, during the deepest part of their sleep.
“We all woke up and looked at one another, and we were wondering really what was going on,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday morning. The astronauts rushed to the flight deck and switched to a backup computer. Within a half-hour they were back in bed.
It was the second such failure of their space station delivery mission. Just before docking to the International Space Station on Sunday, another of the five main shuttle computers conked out. New software loads took care of both problems, although engineers were still trying to figure out why the trouble occurred in the first place.
The five computers are critical for a space shuttle’s return to Earth. Atlantis will make the last journey home of the 30-year space shuttle era next Thursday.
“We’re doing well here,” Ferguson told the AP, “and I’m confident everything’s going to look good when we undock in a couple days.”
Ferguson and his co-pilot, Douglas Hurley, said they’re still too busy moving items back and forth between the linked Atlantis and space station to dwell on the looming end of the shuttle program.
The topic came up at Thursday’s special all-American dinner of grilled chicken, barbecued beef, baked beans, corn and Hostess apple pie. Ferguson said he told the nine other space fliers, “Hey, you know, this is the last joint meal that we’re ever going to have aboard a space shuttle.”
