During a spacewalk recently, two astronauts from the space shuttle Endeavour removed and replaced a gyroscope that failed in late 2006.
Computer scientists at NASA’s Ames research center, Moffett Field, California, designed the new software for the space station. The inductive monitoring system will be added to a group of existing tools to identify and track problems related to the gyroscopes.
David Iverson, the computer scientist at Ames who spearheaded the five year-effort to develop the software, said: If the system does something unexpected, the software alerts ground controllers that something is different, an anomaly, and that allows them to analyze the situation and take preventive measures as necessary.
