A Quick Fix for Flawed Space Station

Working fast, astronauts fixed a broken radio, replaced flawed battery packs and installed foam mufflers over noisy fans Monday aboard the international space station.

They launched into the repairs within minutes of entering the 77-foot orbiting complex late Sunday. Several hours later, much of the work was done.

“It literally was open the hatch and run in there and get to work,” said flight director Paul Hill, marveling at the crew’s speed and precision.

Two of space shuttle Discovery’s seven astronauts immediately went to work on the radio system inside the U.S.-made Unity module, replacing two electronic boxes. The new parts allow NASA to once again monitor all systems aboard Unity.

The radio link from Unity was lost in April, just four months after the module was hoisted into orbit.

“Congratulations, you have a lot of happy flight controllers looking at data,” Mission Control called up.

At the same time, Russian Valery Tokarev and Canadian Julie Payette pulled up the floor inside the Russian-built Zarya control module to reach batteries that had not been charging right for months.

Each of the six batteries has three electronic meters, and each meter needed to be replaced.

By Monday morning, Tokarev and Payette had finished work on four batteries, taking only half as much time as expected. They wrapped up the job Monday night.

The crew also tackled Zarya’s noise problem.

When Zarya, the first space station component, was launched by the Russians in November, it did not meet NASA’s acoustic standards because of clattering fans. Officials compared the noise level to a busy street corner, prompting fears of hearing damage for astronauts who might spend months on board.