A short circuit put part of the International Space Station's power systems offline, and fixing the damage may necessitate a resupply mission and spacewalk. Fortunately, there is no danger to the crew from Friday's glitch, NASA said Monday.
All orbital controls and communications are up despite the failure of one of the station's eight power channels, according to a NASA blog post mentioning the event. "Ground teams are discussing future repair plans and are currently able to manage the power balance for the foreseeable future," the post read.
NASA spokesman Dan Huot told NBC News in an email that the failure has "no impact to continued station operations." Such failures have happened before and can be repaired, but the crew lacks the parts, which will have to be sent up in a resupply mission.
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"The earliest a spare would be manifested would be on SpaceX-8 sometime in early 2016," wrote Huot. He noted that the power system is perfectly able to function and thus any delay should cause no serious worry. The repair operation would be similar to those carried out in October 2014 during a six-hour spacewalk by astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren.
The failure came on the same day as the terrorist attacks in Paris, to which the ISS crew dedicated a moment of silence before extending their sympathies to France.
