April 17, 2002	Wednesday	Safar 3, 142

CAPE CANAVERAL (USA), April 16: The first rail system in space hit a snag during its inaugural run on Monday, but after several hours of brainstorming NASA resumed its test of the International Space Station’s new railway.

The rail system’s origins may be in the Industrial Age, but it was a Space Age problem that halted the test — a computer shut down the nine-foot (2.7-metre) trolley and put it into safe mode after it moved about 17 feet (5.1 metres) along its 32 feet (9.7 metres) of track.

“As you can imagine. We’re having a big discussion,” Mission Control told the astronauts.

Later, ground controllers said the likely culprits were some magnetic sensors that lost contact with the rail car, perhaps by no more than 1/50,000 of an inch (0.00005 cm), but enough to send bad information to the computers.

After several hours, the trolley was moving again and NASA declared success.

“I can officially say that our space rail system is in service,” Ben Sellari, a NASA mission manager, told reporters.

The Mobile Transporter, as it is known, may not be as grand as the Orient Express but it cost a lot more — 190 million dollars.

Ultimately, the trolley will have a run of more than 300 feet (91 metres) along a truss under construction atop the space station.

Its purpose is to move the station’s giant robot arm, a kind of construction crane with a computer brain, from one work site to another as construction continues on the orbiting outpost.

The problem that cropped up during Monday’s test came after the rail car had latched itself down at one of the work sites.—Reuters