Station Recovers From Survival Mode

A problem with a signal relayer on the Russian side of the International Space Station put the outpost in survival mode today as critical systems automatically shut down until the trouble could be sorted out, NASA officials said.

To make matters worse, the toilet in Russia's command-and-control module broke down, forcing the crew to rely on a privy in a Soyuz spacecraft now serving as an emergency escape vehicle.

Engineers on the ground are troubleshooting the problem; it appears to be similar to trouble encountered earlier this year with a separator in the system.

The telemetry trouble was quickly traced to an electronics box on the Russian side of the station, and ground controllers found a fix.

But the switch to survival mode resulted in a power down of systems on both the Russian and U.S. side of the station as well as European and Japanese laboratories. And ground controllers still are going through a long and tedious effort to restore power to outpost systems.

John Ira Petty, a spokesman for NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said the station commander Sergei Volkov and two flight engineers -- Oleg Kononenko and Gregory Chamitoff -- were able to continue most of their work while ground controllers sorted out the trouble.

But a scheduled test of thrusters on the Soyuz docked at the station is being postponed until Saturday. Volkov, Kononenko and space tourist Richard Garriott will fly the Soyuz back to Earth on Oct. 23.

The problem will not delay the planned launch early Sunday of Garriott and a new station crew -- Expedition 18 commander Michael Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov.

The three are scheduled to blast off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 3:01 a.m. EDT Sunday. Live NASA TV coverage of the launch will be webcast here in The Flame Trench beginning at 2 a.m.

IMAGE NOTE: Click to enlarge and save the NASA image of the International Space Station taken by the crew of STS-124 as the astronauts departed in outpost in June.