[Douglas Adams] will tell you not to fail to remember your towel when it concerns area travel. however NASA may begin mandating that astronauts always bring a toothbrush. That’s since when a recent repair work on a important worldwide area station element went wrong it was a toothbrush hack that saved the day.
The culprit right here is a bolt that wouldn’t re-seat after replacing a power transfer module that routes electrical power from solar cells to the station’s electrical systems. about exactly how numerous times have you had difficulty with bolt threads? now put yourself in a area fit in orbit for eight hours trying to get the thing to work. Yikes!
Just like in the films there was a team of engineers at the ground center which gathered all the supplies offered in the ISS. They figured out that metal shavings in the threaded hole needed to be cleaned out as well as the area lubed for the bolt. one of the two kinds of tooth brushes on hand would work for the lube, however needed to be stiffened. There was likewise a clean for cleaning the threads which was constructed out of a jumper cable. The pictures seen above are the step-by-step directions the team uploaded to the astronauts who reproduced their hacked hardware to total the repairs.
[Thanks G Mob]