The International Space Station (ISS) is deffinitely the closest thing we have resembling an inter planetary craft. It's in space constantly and people are living aboard it. The only thing it doesn't have is the whole travel-away-from-earth aspect. But then again, that is without a doubt the most difficult part of the whole procedure. We're able to bring up supplies to ISS at any time (money provided) and specialists (ie. space walking repair men) can be brought up nearly as easy. You'd think this would make it relatively easy to deal with right?
Wrong. U.S. astronaut Daniel Tani discovered debris in a esential joint of the solar panel array, which allows the panels to rotate to face the sun. They don't know how the metal like shavings got into the joint; by all acounts it doesn't make sense for them to be there. But the issue still stands that it has happened and this means that they are probably going to have to work on diminished power and that they're probably going to have to bring up the specialists (talked about above) up to fix it.
Now this seems like a relatively small problem, but it high-lights an issue that a space craft travelling to Mars whill undoubtedly encounter: unforseen engineering issues/failures. And since we can't send back to Earth for parts and we certainly aren't going to be able to go back and get another person half way through the trip. We'll have to deal with these issue enroute. Uh-oh.
Full ariticle at: NASA Eyes Worrisome Debris in Space Station Joint
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