Cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov finally managed to fix the International Space Station computers that control orientation and supply of oxygen and water supplies on Saturday after four days of work, NASA reported.
The hardware failure was not an immediate threat but ultimately could have left the station off course and getting oxygen through backup methods. It also treated to cut short or to extend the Atlantis mission.
Yurchikhin and Kotov solved the problem by bypassing a power switch with a cable. By Friday evening, four out of six processors on the two computers on the Russian side of the outpost were operating.
Yurchikhin and Kotov planned to monitor the computers for the next several hours to make sure they were functioning properly.
The computer crash came as astronauts from space shuttle Atlantis were resuming work on the long-running construction of the station. Atlantis' seven astronauts arrived last weekend, NASA's first visit to the space station this year.
Meanwhile, an Atlantis astronaut Friday successfully completed another task: repairing a torn thermal blanket that helps protect the shuttle from heat on its return flight to Earth. Earlier in the week, Mission Specialists Jim Reilly and John Olivas successfully completed tasks during STS-117's first spacewalk to activate the ISS's newest component.
Reilly and Olivas went to work after the Starboard 3 and 4 truss segment was installed onto the station. They made power, data and cooling connections between the station and the S3/S4. The astronauts also released locks and launch restraints on the segment's solar arrays and prepared its radiator and rotary joint for operation.
For now, Atlantis is set to land at Cape Canaveral on Thursday next week.