355 DAY IN THE LIFE: WHEN MAJOR ANOMALIES OCCUR CHAPTER 20 times, a failure may significantly alter the crew’s timeline for the day, as is sometimes the case with malfunctioning equipment needed for the task at hand. Or, the problem could be one that everyone dreads— an enormous failure that takes out a lot of the ISS functionality. The initial flight control team reaction could last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. Sometimes, extensive troubleshooting is required to test various fixes or even to simply diagnosis the problem. Some issues need observation over time to determine what is wrong, some need the engineering designer’s advice, and some require complex ISS repairs that rely on the guidance of a large number of experts. This chapter outlines one (of countless) ISS failures, and the reaction from Mission Control. This major failure occurred in the ammonia system in December 2013. The failure took out a lot of ISS capability and required many days to repair. December 2013— Background Before discussing the failure, the anomaly recovery effort needs to be put in context. In 2012 and 2013, the ISS Program had begun successfully launching two different types of commercial cargo vehicles as part of its move to commercialize transportation to low-Earth orbit. The competing vehicle types were the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) Dragon and the Orbital ATK Cygnus (see Chapter 14). However, in late 2013, SpaceX was in the process of designing an upgrade to their Falcon launch vehicle, and commercial flights to the ISS would be limited for a few months to Cygnus cargo vehicles. Cygnus had performed a demonstration flight to the ISS however, its first officially contracted cargo delivery was to launch in mid- December 2013. Orbital ATK was loading more than 1200 kg (2,645 lbs) of crew supplies, spare parts, research, and extravehicular activity (EVA) equipment. NASA wanted the cargo on the ISS, and Orbital wanted to fulfill its obligations and be paid for the flight. A period of “high beta” (see Chapters 7 and 9) was starting on December 30. During that time, the sun angle would not be favorable for solar array pointing needs and thermal effects on equipment such as antennas, which would result in the powering down of equipment. Docking during these phases is extremely challenging due to the limitations these constraints impose. Any slips to the Cygnus launch would need to skip over this period, placing the mission well into January, so managers were hoping its schedule would hold. One of the key problems facing the space station team at the end of 2013 had to do with use of the spacesuits. The last US EVA in July 2013 had ended in a near fatality when water entered the spacesuit helmet of European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano. The water covered much of his face and almost drowned him. After crew members performed some troubleshooting of the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU), they determined that the water separator in the suit’s Primary Life Support System had clogged, thereby backing up water that ended up dumping into the helmet (see sidebar in Chapter 17, US Extravehicular Activity 23 Water-in-Helmet Incident). An official investigation was ongoing, and a root cause of the water separator clog had not yet been found. Something was contaminating the water system. If it was systemic in the water that was circulating inside the airlock, the source was possibly contaminating the entire fleet of spacesuits. After the incident, the EMU team designed an absorbent pad for the helmet interior that could be constructed by the crew on board, as well as a makeshift snorkel to allow for breathing from the body of the suit if water entered the helmet again. However, until the team found the source of contamination, the risk of drowning due to the same problem in any of the spacesuits was a real possibility for the crew. Engineers on the ground were in the process of assessing hardware from a previous mission and were seeing a complex water chemistry problem with no obvious cause. The plans on board the space station for the month of December 2013 were filled with science, Cygnus cargo transfer operations, and a Russian Segment EVA on December 20—but that was all about to change. “Orbit 2” day shift— Wednesday Dec 11, 2013 It was a “standard” Wednesday for the ISS operations team, just after 8 a.m. Central Standard Time (14:00 Greenwich Mean Time), about the middle of the crew’s day. The ground team was working with the crew in the airlock to get ready for installation of a new oxygen supply tank and were looking ahead to activities to prepare for the arrival