STS-100 Status Report – 26 Apr 2001 – 10:30 a.m. CDT

Good news greeted space station flight controllers this morning when,
shortly after awakening, Expedition Two flight engineer Susan Helms
reported that the International Space Station computer systems may be
returning to normal.

Working at a laptop computer aboard the station that serves as the
crew’s primary interface with the station’s United States’ command and
control computer system, Helms relayed the good news about 3:45 a.m.
Shortly afterward, Helms performed a series of troubleshooting steps that
restored the ground’s ability to monitor and send commands to the
station’s U.S. systems.

Space station flight controllers then sent commands that have put the
station’s systems in a better configuration in the event computer
problems recur today. They also sent commands that transmitted data to the
ground from the station computers to allow technicians to thoroughly
analyze their hardware and software as part of the investigation that is
under way to determine the cause of the computer problems.

Today, the astronauts and cosmonauts aboard Endeavour will continue
joint work to reload the Raffaello logistics module with unneeded station
equipment and supplies for return to Earth. The crews have completed
unloading the 4,000 pounds of equipment that Raffaello carried to the
station. While the reloading of Raffaello takes place, flight controllers
will continue their analysis of the station computers. The station
command and control computer brought on line early this morning has
continued to be fully functiional and operate normally throughout the day.
Controllers are working to bring another such computer online as a backup
system later today. The recovery of the one command and control
computer during the night is believed to have resulted from an automatic
sequence aboard the station that powered each of the three command and
control computers on and off in an attempt to bring them on line. The other
two computers remained off line, however.

Given continued success with the computer recovery, the shuttle and
station crews will resume work with the station’s new Canadarm2 and the
shuttle’s robotic arm on Friday, handing off a 3,000-pound Spacelab
Pallet from the station arm to the shuttle arm to store the pallet back in Endeavour’s payload bay. A practice run with the new station arm to rehearse moves the arm must make during the next shuttle assembly mission to the
station to attach a new airlock also will be conducted on Friday.

A second reboost of the station’s altitude remains planned for later
today. It will be an hour-long jet firing by Endeavour that will raise
the complex’s altitude by almost 4½ miles. The two spacecraft are now
orbiting the Earth every 92 minutes at an altitude of 243 statute miles.
The next status report will be issued this evening at the end of the
crews’ day or as events warrant.