NASA's space shuttle program was once again in crisis as officials found a sabotaged computer meant for an imminent mission, and a trade magazine reported astronauts had been drunk on duty.
The tampered computer was due to be installed on the US space shuttle Endeavour for an August mission to work on the International Space Station (ISS).
"One of our subcontractors noticed that a network box for the shuttle had appeared to have been tampered with," NASA spokeswoman Katherine Trinidad said on Thursday. "It is intentional damage to hardware."
She said the workers who discovered the computer damage at the subcontractor's facility -- not at NASA's -- had notified the space agency "several days ago," adding: "There is an ongoing investigation."
She gave no details of who the subcontractors were nor exactly where the damage was.
"What we are trying to do now is repair that unit and try and fly it when possible," she said.
Endeavour and a crew of seven were due for launch on Aug. 7 from NASA's base at Cape Canaveral, Florida, for a mission aimed at continuing work on building the orbiting space laboratory.
Safety is a major concern in shuttle missions after damage sustained by the Columbia craft on launch caused it to break up on re-entry in February 2003, killing all seven astronauts on board.
Also on Thursday, the trade magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology, citing an internal NASA panel, said astronauts had been allowed to fly spacecraft while drunk on at least two occasions. It did not specify which missions had been affected.
The panel also reported "heavy use of alcohol" inside the standard 12-hour "bottle to throttle" abstinence period applied to NASA flight-crew members, the magazine said.
A NASA spokesman was not immediately available for comment, but NASA had scheduled a press conference detailing the panel's findings for yesterday afternoon.
In anticipation of the report's formal release, one US lawmaker was primed to seek answers from NASA.
"If the reports of drunken astronauts being allowed to fly prove to be true, I think the agency will have a lot of explaining to do," said Bart Gordon, chairman of the House of Representatives' science and technology committee.
"That's not the `right stuff' as far as I'm concerned," he said, alluding to a 1983 film about early NASA crews The Right Stuff, based on Tom Wolfe's 1979 book.
The internal NASA panel was set up to review astronaut health after astronaut Lisa Nowak was arrested in February and charged with trying to kidnap a woman who had been dating another astronaut. NASA fired her in March.
NASA faced more heartbreak in April, when contractor Bill Phillips sneaked a revolver past security at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, and barricaded himself inside a building.
He duct-taped a female co-worker to a chair and shot a male colleague dead before turning the gun on himself.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
RSS