Emergency around the Sun

Emergency around the Sun

SOB was completed on the 17th of August. Our scientists began working there the next week, and the station has never been unmanned since then. Every day on the Solar Orbiting Base was a normal day without anything unordinary. But that changed on the 4th of September…

That Tuesday started quite well for the astronauts aboard the station. The sensor station on lower orbit sent very useful data to them which they started to analyse enthusiastically, when everything went dark. They looked around and asked each other: “What the heck has happened?”

The yellow rectangle shows the middle alley, where the crew had to stay until the rescuers arrived.

The person in charge, Cpt. Alyson White immediately checked the power grid of the station, which showed a disastrous scene: all solar panels and nuclear generators were shut down and they couldn’t be turned back on. No power meant no oxygen generation in the O2 gardens. She ordered emergency situation instantly and started the STA_P13b protocol. The crew was ordered to stop doing everything, carry the portable batteries on the station to the middle alley, gather there, and separate that alley from the other parts of the station in terms of power and air.

After this procedure was completed, they powered up the centre of the station. Only a few batteries were available, so they turned off lights in the 2 corridors, the pods, and the habitation modules. The O2 garden was necessary as well as the heating system. To inform EMC about their situation they had to turn on the control room for communication. The SOS signal with a short message was sent, and the reply came back soon: SPS was notified, and they will send the rescue team shortly. After that, they had to turn off the control room again to save power until the arrival of the Shuttles, so no communication was possible.

As 8 astronauts were on the base, at least 2 Shuttles were needed for bringing all of them to safe location, because the new Shuttles can only take 5 people. According to GSpace emergency regulations, 1 Shuttle always has to be ready to fly instantly, so GSS Gagarin left SPS for SOB immediately with 6 batteries on board, GSS Shepard followed it after a quick security review, and with that, the STL 07 mission began. GSS Gagarin tried to contact SOB on the way, but they didn’t succeed, because the communication system was powered down as I mentioned earlier. The Shuttle arrived on solar orbit soon, but they still had no idea weather the crew was alive or dead. They docked without a permission from the station, pressurised the corridor, and connected it to the Shuttle’s power. 2 of the 3 passengers of the ship entered SOB in spacesuit.

When they opened the inner door of the corridor, they saw the crew of the station, who felt relieved like never before. 2 of them were in a pretty bad condition because after a few hours they turned off the heating system to save more power, because they knew nothing about the time of arrival of the rescuers. These two, and two more astronauts boarded GSS Gagarin and left to SPS with the pilot, where they were taken care of. The other four members of the crew, including Cpt. White, stayed there with the two arrived on the Shuttle, waiting for GSS Shepard.

During this waiting time the newly arrived astronauts started to look for the cause of the power failure. They connected half of the station to the power grid and switched all power sources back on: ATV-s, MSS sensor wings, CSgt nuclear generators, but they couldn’t do that with the solar panels for some reason. So, they got into one of the pods and flew next to the closed solar panels. Meanwhile, GSS Shepard arrived, too, with a mechanic and a pilot. The crew of the pod talked with them and tried to open the solar panels from outside with a tool on the pod. They succeeded with all 3 panels, but when the 3rd one was opened, the power was turned off again. This was a clear indication of some kind of mechanical failure in that panel. Power was turned on again, so were the 2 good panels, but the 3rd one was left closed for the time of the proper examination. The other half of the station was powered on, too, and everything was back to normal, except for the faulty panel, so GSS Shepard left with the pilot and the other 4 members of the crew. The 3 astronauts from SPS stayed on SOB to repair everything.

After everyone was safe and the Shuttles were back on SPS, the faulty panel was replaced on SOB and was sent back to GSS for analysation. A production mistake resulted in a short circuit in the panel, which caused the whole system to power down to avoid an electric fire. Thank God, this was a lucky emergency, but not all of them have come to a fortunate ending in the history of GSpace. I will write about them in another blog post.

Written by: Gen. A.S.