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99 Problems and a Wild Gecko Space Orgy
Author: Amy Shira Teitel
On July 19, Russia launched a satellite designed to study the effects of microgravity on, among other living beings, geckos.
The purpose was to observe the geckos—four females and one lucky male—mating, then study how fertilization in microgravity affected the eggs after the satellite returned to Earth. But there was a glitch: The satellite stopped responding to commands. Russia’s orbiting gecko orgy was zooming around the planet out of control.
An out-of-control orbiting gecko orgy is probably a first, but in one way is not so surprising: Ever since we started sending machines up into space, strange challenges have been pretty common, especially when new technologies are being tested or deployed.
A lot of what we’ve learned about spaceflight has come through trial and error, and oftentimes breaking into new frontiers reveals interesting and unexpected problems. Controlling what happens inside a spacecraft isn’t exactly rocket science. In some ways, it’s harder.
An unanticipated but preventable problem nearly canceled America’s very first human spaceflight. On the morning of May 5, 1961, Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard was fitted in his pressure suit and strapped inside the Freedom 7 spacecraft, ready to make the nation’s tentative first foray into space: a 15-minute suborbital flight.
Source: http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2014/08/99-problems-and-a-wild-gecko-space-orgy/
