Sunita Williams's return may delayed due to computer failure.
The return of shuttle
Atlantis, which will bring back Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams home after her six month space sojourn has been delayed by two days to help astronauts fix a problem on the body of the spacecraft.A crippling flaw in the crucial Russian computers on board the International Space Station has added to the problems of Atlantis space shuttle whose return to earth with Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams and six others is likely to be delayed further. The failure of the computers, which control the International Space Station's positioning have NASA managers considering another extension of space shuttle Atlantis' voyage to the orbiting outpost, officials said.
Since the failure of the computers, thrusters on the docked space shuttle have been fired periodically to help maintain the space station's positioning. NASA managers hoped to have the computers back up before Atlantis and its seven crew members undock from the 16-nation space station.
But if the computers are not functioning, NASA may look into extending the space shuttle's stay a day or two. The extension is being considered since the shuttle's altitude-control jets and life support could be used to supplement the station while engineers work on the problem.
Space station programme manager Mike Suffredini said on Wednesday he expected the problem to be fixed in the next couple of days.
In a worst-case scenario, if at least one of the computers was not operating after the shuttle left, the space station's three crew members could return to Earth, he said.
"We always have an option to depart," Suffredini said. On Wednesday, two astronauts went on a spacewalk to complete two tasks.
They helped fold up a solar wing and tried to bring to life a rotating joint that will allow a new pair of solar arrays to track the sun.
The spacewalk began at 2358 IST as the astronauts were 332 kilometres above eastern Europe and ended more than seven hours later.
Space shuttle Atlantis astronauts Patrick Forrester and Steve Swanson spent the first two hours helping to put the 35-metre solar wing away in its storage box
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