Last Line of Defense

I have been reading this ESA blog over the past few days. ESA is the European Space Agency, and this shuttle mission is carrying their laboratory module Columbus to the space station. It’s the first major science addition to the station since 2001, and it’s really cool to see how excited the bloggers are about their module finally going up. Until now, the space station has really just been a joint US-Russian outpost with the occasional visiting European astronaut. But STS-122 will add the European lab, and the next two missions in February and April will add the Japanese components. The space station is finally becoming international in practice as well as in name. Pretty exciting.

I’ve been listening to the Mission Management Team meeting today as they try to reach a decision on whether to try to launch tomorrow and what additional troubleshooting needs to be done on the engine cutoff (ECO)sensors. Two of them failed yesterday, while two of them worked properly, which is halfway to a failed ECO system. I just listened to safety group present a chart that says that if we launch with a failed ECO system, the ARD is the ONLY control protecting against catastrophic engine failure due to fuel depletion. What is the ARD? It’s the Abort Region Determinator. It’s also the piece of software that is my sole responsibility during ascent. I am the ARD Support Officer. If we launched with a failed ECO system, I would be in charge of the only thing protecting us from potential disaster.

Holy. Freaking. Crap.

Fortunately they have decided that we will NOT launch with a failed ECO system.

I do hope they figure out the problem. For once, I’d like to work on a Saturday, because that means we’ll be launching.