July 18

Even in Space, It’s Not a Matter of If, But When Digital Disaster will Strike

Astronauts aboard the much talked about and followed final Space Shuttle mission experienced a computer glitch and were found scrambling early Friday morning. Aboard a space shuttle mission astronauts have a busy schedule of performing tests and experiments, doing science studies, delivering goods to the International Space Station as well as ceremonial events like greetings from Presidents and famous musicians back on Earth. Getting some sleep, while part of the schedule, can be a challenge on its own. The last thing a shuttle crew wants is to be woken up unexpectedly. That’s what happened late Thursday night/Friday morning when an alarm started sounding that a computer had failed and the crew had to jump out of their slumber to see what was up.

'SpaceCube' example of a specialized computer for space missions with extra shielding to alleviate errors caused by radiation in space; Credit: NASA

As the unexpected computer failure alert was signaled, the crew got down to finding out what was wrong and taking action to get business back to normal in the middle of the night. Getting data and backup software programs to an alternate machine were some of the measures needed to get things running again. Daily operations make use of anywhere between 2 and 4 of the main shuttle computers, while super-critical moments like re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere use all 5 onboard computers. Once Mission Control reviewed that everything was running again, the astronaut crew was allowed to go back to sleep. Later that morning, they received a wakeup call from R&B superstar Beyonce who paid tribute to their work and the general history of the Shuttle program (the first of multiple beamed recordings on the day, the next being from Sir Paul McCartney). The interruption of a computer failure required immediate attention to get computer access online again and beyond that the crew will continue to investigate data records of the error in order to figure out what went wrong.

Systems fail, things happen, I.T. Happens.

The Shuttle and space program are no strangers to freak occurrences and unexpected happenings – enough of them have made the press coverage over the decades, but they cope by being ready to take action and planning for disaster recovery. When it comes to your crucial I.T. systems and the data that is protected and managed by them, continuity in the event of a loss is key. Data recovery services provided by CBL are all about this. Labs stand at the ready to fix problems and get digital media from hard drives, laptops, servers and portable devices back in your hands so ‘business as usual’ can continue. Business as usual on a Space Shuttle mission might not be anything close to ‘usual’ but even 220 miles above the clouds, dealing with computer disasters is part of it.

Category: data loss prevention, business

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Comments

  1. Lavinia
    Aug 6, 04:59 PM

    Hey, that’s peorwful. Thanks for the news.

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