Robotic cargo spacecraft misses rendezvous with ISS An unmanned Russian cargo ship missed its scheduled rendezvous with the International Space Station on Friday after a telemetry lock between the two spacecraft failed. Engineers are scrambling to figure out why. The robotic Progress 38 spacecraft sailed past the station as its crew tried in vain to regain telemetry with the it …
If they are running it on tubes (unlikely, but for the sake of argument) then it'd be a hell of a lot better at surviving in orbit than more modern equipment. Vacuum tubes aren't particularly susceptible to the effects of cosmic rays and solar wind, which can easily bugger up solid-state circuitry and leave a satellite completely non-functional. They're also more tolerant of temperature extremes than solid-state ICs, which would mean they were more capable of surviving the rigours of space flight with relatively less complex cooling equipment.
Just because something is old technology doesn't make it worse in every possible situation. It's often more robust, cheaper, and easier to use.
...and some four years down the line or so, when NASA might get to have a moon-reaching program again.
Hey, but maybe they forgot to convert some Imperial units into Metric? Tee hee.
So, but why not just pull up a beer and wait for 'em throw the big grappling hook, after all?
It is *highly* unlikely that ISS supplies would be allowed to fall to the level where they are 1 ship away from starvation, hence the "Not essential" comment.
I looked up the Soyuz on board computers and they are beasts. USSR mfg chips and weigh about 70Kg (roughly late 60's TTL near as I can tell). The docking hardware is likely to be a *bit* more up to date. In some ways this is a bad thing as the smaller geometry makes it *more* prone to single even upset by a stray particle releasing holes and electrons in the wrong place. It's still doubtful this would have caused the fail.
Weather this is what happened or if its a simpler explanation, (dry PCB joint, loose aerial connection) will probably have to wait for a board of enquiry. it is *very* curious that ISS should loose telemetry data at such short range from the transmitter.
I was out last night to watch it pass over. It was a very clear night and even though it wasn't completely dark, quite a few stars were visible. As the ISS came into view I was wondering whereabouts the progress ship would be, and would it be visible?
Just before the ISS reached maximum elevation we spotted the Progress about 5-10 degrees ahead of it on an identical track.
Next good pass over London is tonight (sunday) at about 2148. If there's no cloud it should be easy to see as it will be directly overhead (comes in from the west).
Very useful site, for anyone who fancies trying to spot the ISS. Depending on how close it gets, it's bright enough to see on an evening pass so try checking for "all passes" as well as "visible passes". The website seems to automatically mark any passes made before absolute darkness as not visible.
Also a pair of 20x50 binoculars seems enough to make the station go from "very bright moving dot" to "very wobbly elongated dot". At some point I'll get the chance to spot it with some proper optics in a region that doesn't have an orange sky at night.
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