CHAPTER 10 DAY IN THE LIFE: PREPARING FOR THE UNEXPECTED 182 FLIGHT: Ok, in the meantime do you already know what your troubleshooting plan would be, or… CRONUS: Yeah FLIGHT with it being loss of comm [meaning the Internal MDM cannot talk to the LA-1 MDM] the only thing we can do is to try to power cycle the MDM. I don’t have the specific procedures for you yet but I can get those for you if you’d like and put the whole plan together in a flight note [a text document that can be read and reviewed by the entire team]. FLIGHT: Yeah let’s go ahead and get that in work so that you have another shift to take a look at it. CRONUS: Wilco. [Short for “will comply.”] The Emergency The team works through various failures for several hours (Figure 4). Each failure represents a singular problem for that particular flight controller and his or her system. The flight director, however, keeps track of all the failures and pays close attention to the overall picture with the goal of trying to complete the planned activities with minimal impact. While each controller may be dealing with one or two individual problems, the flight director is tracking issues with six to nine systems. Flight’s role has often been compared to the Chinese acrobat balancing spinning plates on long sticks. However, as challenging as these individual failures are, the most-critical issues facing the team are these emergencies: fire, rapid depress, and toxic atmosphere (see Chapter 19). Therefore, the trainers frequently push the team further with a major emergency, often after an exhausting round of system failures. After several hours, the situation turned very serious when an emergency alarm—TOXIC ATMOSPHERE – MANUAL ALARM – LAB—appeared, in red, on the big caution-and-warning display in the front of the control room. This meant the crew detected a toxic spill, possibly ammonia, in the Laboratory module. ETHOS: FLIGHT, ETHOS, I see the toxic atmosphere alarm. CAPCOM [on the S/G-1 loop]: Station, Houston, on 1, we see a manual toxic atmosphere alarm, can we get a status when you can? [No response from the crew.] ETHOS: FLIGHT, ETHOS. FLIGHT: ETHOS? ETHOS: Like I said my Lab ITCS due to the LA-1 MDM, I have lost insight into any type of potential ammonia leak. In this case FLIGHT I’d expect that the crew is doing their emergency response but for the team here on the ground we’re going into EMER- 1 [the initial emergency response procedures, also known as the “Red Book”] procedure 3.3. CAPCOM [on the S/G-1 loop]: Station, Houston, Space to Ground 1, we assume you have pressed the manual alarm button for an ammonia release, and we are in 3.3, Emergency 3 decimal 3, for ammonia release. That is our assumption. CRONUS: FLIGHT, CRONUS. FLIGHT: CRONUS, FLIGHT. CRONUS: I’d like to get a go for emergency comm config [shorthand for communications configuration, this procedure ensures that all voice loops can be heard in as many ISS modules as possible]. FLIGHT: You’re go. CRONUS: In addition I’m going to work on bringing up the PTR [Port Thermal Radiator] MDM as SPARTAN could need it for emergency response. [The PTR MDM is required if the SPARTAN has to lock the arrays in a specific position.] FLIGHT: Concur. ETHOS: FLIGHT, ETHOS. FLIGHT: Go. SPARTAN: SPARTAN concurs. ETHOS: FLIGHT, ETHOS. FLIGHT: Go ahead. ETHOS: There’s an action I want to do anyway but I’d like a go to transition my Lab ITCS to Dual [mode]. I’ll get better insight. FLIGHT: You’re go. ETHOS: Copy FLIGHT. FLIGHT: Ok, let’s see, GC, you can go ahead and call Spacecraft Emergency. [This is a protocol that the Ground Controller (GC), who is responsible for the MCC infrastructure as well as interface to the NASA Space Network, invokes with the Space Network to make sure the ISS gets all available satellite communications assets and bumps other users from using those assets.] GC: FLIGHT, GC, I copy. CRONUS: FLIGHT, CRONUS, emergency comm config is in place. FLIGHT: Copy. ETHOS: And FLIGHT, ETHOS, I do see a positive DP/DT [shorthand for delta atmospheric pressure increasing over delta time, meaning something is coming into the pressurized volume]