Buzz
The cost of sending something into space runs into the millions, and requires thousands of hours of work. This is because every potential scenario must be planned for—once an object is in space, Earth's ability to intervene is minimal. Despite this, issues continue to arise, and once again, NASA's innovative thinkers step up to solve them.
10. The Curiosity Rover Moves in Reverse
The Curiosity Rover is not just a technological achievement but also a symbol of humanity’s drive to explore the cosmos, or at least our solar system. Given that it is over 56 million kilometers (34.8 million miles) away, maximizing its functionality is essential.
Damage to wheels is an inevitable result of navigating a planet with a rocky, jagged surface. As Curiosity has journeyed across Mars, its wheels have understandably become chipped and worn. Replacing them, however, is not an option, so NASA had to come up with a quick fix. Their solution was surprisingly simple: they instructed the Rover to drive backward.
With six wheels, the Curiosity Rover can spread the potential wear and tear evenly across all of them by occasionally driving backward. This helps to slow the degradation of each wheel, ultimately extending the Rover’s overall lifespan.
9. The Hubble Space Telescope Needs Glasses
The Hubble Space Telescope has provided some of the earliest and most famous images of the farthest reaches of our universe, capturing stunning photographs for nearly two decades. While future technologies will eventually replace it, the Hubble remains one of the most iconic objects orbiting Earth.
When the Hubble Space Telescope was first launched, its initial images were disastrously blurry. While they were still an improvement over what ground-based telescopes could capture, they were far from perfect. Then, Hubble engineers made a startling discovery: a mirror inside the telescope was misaligned by 'about 1/50th the width of a human hair.' This small miscalculation was responsible for the blurred images.
Rather than create an entirely new mirror, which would have been prohibitively expensive, the engineers found a solution rooted in an 800-year-old concept: glasses. Using the principles behind eyeglasses and contact lenses, they designed two devices to correct the problem instead of adjusting the mirror itself. These devices featured a series of relay mirrors designed to compensate for the flaw, along with a set of cameras to capture the corrected light and transmit it back to Earth.
The result was dramatically clearer images from the Hubble, all at a fraction of the cost of replacing the faulty mirror. As an interesting side note, the HST was apparently 'near-sighted.'
8. The Huygens Probe Was Saved by Its Delay
The Cassini–Huygens mission, launched in 1997, was a combined spacecraft and probe designed to explore Saturn and its atmosphere. While it wasn’t humanity’s first mission to Saturn, it was the first to be designed to enter Saturn’s orbit and explore its moons.
A few years after launch, engineers identified a critical flaw. The plan was for the Huygens probe to send data back to Cassini before it was transmitted to Earth. However, it was predicted that if the probe was released as scheduled, the Doppler effect (shown above, where the ripples become closer together as the swan moves) would distort the signal to the point where it would be unreadable.
To be precise: 'The Doppler shift not only altered the frequency of the incoming signal but also compressed it into a shorter time frame. As a result, Cassini’s receiver would be unable to detect the timing pulse at the expected location, rendering the data unreadable.'
This would have spelled the end for the experiment, but the engineers and scientists had a clever solution. The fix was elegantly simple: by delaying the probe’s release by just a few days, they could minimize the Doppler effect, allowing the probe and spacecraft to orbit Saturn in a slightly altered manner.
7. Skylab’s Heat Shield Was Actually an Umbrella
Skylab is remembered as one of the first space stations, but it also holds a unique place in history as the space station that was repaired with fishing poles. When Skylab launched, the special shielding designed to protect the crew from lethal radiation was damaged and torn away. Thankfully, Skylab was unmanned at the time of launch, but the loss of this shielding rendered the station nearly useless. Without it, no one would be able to board, as 'Temperatures would be unbearable, onboard food and film stores would spoil, and overheated plastic components could release toxic gases.'
A quick solution was needed, and while NASA proposed several fixes, all of them required astronauts to venture into space, which was highly risky. That’s when Jack Kinzler, reviewing the Skylab designs, noticed a small overlooked opening, typically used for cameras. This sparked a creative idea: why not have astronauts board Skylab and make the repairs from the inside? In fact, they didn’t even need to repair anything—they just needed to block out the Sun.
What was needed, Kinzler realized, was a parasol. When NASA claimed they didn’t have one, Kinzler designed and built one in just six days, using fishing poles as a framework. The result was so effective that, even though the astronauts who later docked with Skylab didn’t deploy it correctly, it still blocked out as much radiation as the original heat shields.
6. A Simple Name Change Saves a Spacesuit
One of the challenges of wearing a spacesuit is that astronauts have to stay in them for extended periods, which means arrangements need to be made for bathroom breaks.
When spacesuits were first designed, one of the solutions for male astronauts was the inclusion of a type of condom connected to a small bag, which would fit snugly around an astronaut’s body, allowing them to relieve themselves without any issues.
However, as explained in this video, astronauts had a tendency to choose the largest size condom, unwilling to accept anything labeled as 'small' or 'medium.' This led to a problem for some astronauts, as the condom would slip off, resulting in them accidentally urinating inside their suits.
To solve this, the team behind the spacesuits decided to change the names of the sizes from 'small,' 'medium,' and 'large' to 'large,' 'gigantic,' and 'humongous.' This simple tweak worked wonders, as no astronaut complained afterward, nor did the people tasked with cleaning the suits.
5 Duct Tape Fixes Everything
Apollo 13 is famous as the mission that went awry, but not so disastrously that it couldn’t be turned into a blockbuster movie. For those unfamiliar with the mission or the film, Apollo 13 was meant to land on the moon. However, a few days after launch, an oxygen tank exploded, causing the mission to be aborted. The astronauts were forced to rely on the tiny lunar module to stay alive.
One of the many challenges the crew faced during their time in orbit was the lack of proper filters for the machine that removed CO2 from the air. With only around 24 hours of breathable air remaining, the crew faced a serious threat. Although they had plenty of filters, none of them fit the machine. It was a classic case of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
Rather than giving into panic, the crew ingeniously wrapped the square filters in cardboard and used duct tape to secure them into place. Amazingly, this makeshift fix worked, preventing CO2 poisoning and securing yet another win for duct tape in the annals of space history.
(The image above displays the filter created by the ground crew, which they then instructed Apollo 13 to replicate.)
4 Astronaut Steers With His Wristwatch
Gordon Cooper, seen on the right, was an American astronaut given the responsibility of flying the last rocket of Project Mercury in 1962, a series of missions designed to test human spaceflight. His mission was meant to be a 'long-duration mission,' lasting more than 24 hours, setting a new American record at the time. It served as both the grand finale of Project Mercury and an effort to keep pace with the Soviet Union’s advancements in space.
Unfortunately, the mission took a turn for the worse. During his 19th orbit, the electrical systems on his spacecraft, named 'Faith 7' after Cooper’s confidence in it, started to malfunction. By the 20th orbit, Cooper could no longer read his instruments, and by the 21st, he was left with no means of controlling the craft except for manually adjusting the thrusters.
Steering the craft wasn’t much help without any way to track its movement, especially since none of the navigation instruments were working. Cooper kept his cool and used the stars and the Sun, visible through his window, to calculate his position. He then used his wristwatch to time the rocket firings needed for the correct course. In the end, he managed to land safely in the Pacific Ocean. In other words, Cooper, with nothing but his mind and a simple watch, was able to replicate the complex performance of expensive equipment, landing the craft without incident.
3. Buzz Aldrin Uses Pen To Escape Moon
After completing their historic Moon landing and collecting lunar samples, Buzz Aldrin made a disturbing realization. While inspecting the array of switches and buttons in the lunar module, he discovered that one of the switches needed to re-connect with the Command Module was broken. He and Neil Armstrong were effectively stranded on the Moon unless it was fixed.
After a frustrating attempt to rest on the issue, Buzz noticed a small gap where the button used to be, and he wondered if he could use a piece of wire to push it in. However, he discarded the idea, not wanting to risk electrocution. Finally, in a moment of serendipity, Buzz remembered that he had a standard felt-tip pen in his pocket, and, as luck would have it, the pen fit perfectly into the gap, allowing both astronauts to successfully launch and return.
After the crew’s return, Buzz actually took the broken switch with him. Instead of returning it to NASA or anything like that, he decided to keep it as a personal memento.
2. The Back-Up Toilet Is Extremely Low-Tech
In 2008, the toilet aboard the International Space Station suddenly malfunctioned without any warning. Fortunately, there was still a Soyuz capsule attached to the ISS, which had a functional toilet. However, the Soyuz capsule, designed only to house cosmonauts for short trips, didn’t have the capacity to handle the bathroom needs of the entire crew aboard the station. Things got even more complicated a year later when a cosmonaut was prohibited from using the American toilet.
So, what do the astronauts do when the space station’s toilet breaks down? The answer is surprisingly low-tech: They use a bag. This practice dates back to the Apollo era. For instance, during a 1984 mission, astronauts had to urinate into bags after their toilet was shut down to avoid a frozen urine icicle causing damage. Even after they managed to dislodge the icicle with a robot arm, the toilet stayed out of order, leaving the bag as the only option.
When the ISS toilet malfunctioned once more in 2009, NASA remarked that "Apollo-era urine collection bags are on hand." In the previous year, when the toilet broke down in 2008, it was reported that the astronauts had to attach a "special receptacle" to the toilet to catch their waste. We hope this means they used bags, because if not, we’re left wondering why they didn’t use that receptacle the next year.
In more dire situations, bags start to seem like a luxury. In 1997, the MIR space station was severely damaged in a collision, leading to a complete power outage for two days. With no toilet available, the astronauts simply had to hold it in.
1. Crew Catches Satellite With Their Hands
In 1990, NASA launched the communications satellite Intelsat 603, alongside four others. However, due to a technical malfunction, Intelsat 603 became trapped in low-Earth orbit. With no way to move the satellite, the decision was made to simply leave it where it was.
The satellite remained in its position for an additional two years until the inaugural mission of Endeavour, which was tasked with retrieving, repairing, and launching the satellite back into orbit. However, before any repairs could be made, the satellite needed to be captured. This responsibility was handed to two of the three astronauts aboard Endeavour, who were provided with a specially designed "capture bar."
Pierre Thuot and Richard Hieb spent two full days attempting to grab the satellite with the capture bar, but they couldn't succeed. On the third day, both astronauts, joined by their fellow crew member Thomas Akers, embarked on an impromptu spacewalk and physically seized the satellite with their hands.
This marked the first time in history that three astronauts had walked in space together simultaneously, and it was completely unplanned. The fact that these men actually grabbed a satellite with their own hands just adds to the awe of this extraordinary moment.
