A few years ago, the NASA decided to withdraw the Space Shuttle from service, but they did not count on the fact that some of the parts were no longer manufactured and there were no official suppliers who could get them. So what did the space agency do? He went to buy the parts on eBay.
He Space Shuttle was about to enter the age of the obsolete. A group of NASA experts wanted to take him out of circulation and another believed that he could continue to live for another 10 years. Let’s remember that this equipment is one of the most important for the North American space agency, because it was the first to transport astronauts to low Earth orbit.
His first trip was in 1981. So when 2000 rolled around, with 20 years of work behind him, it was time to start changing. Those who wanted to keep him alive thought they could give him another 10 years, but some of his spare parts weren’t so easily at hand.
A NASA contractor, in charge of maintaining the Space Shuttle. an article of xatakawhich quotes The New York Times, reports that those in charge of the project went to electronic commerce to find what was not in the space agency’s workshops.
42 years ago the first orbital flight of the Space Shuttle was launched, the STS-1 mission. The vehicle was the OV-102 Columbia, and the crew was confirmed by experienced astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen. pic.twitter.com/RGjsKLoeId
— PegasusA4 (@A4Kike) April 12, 2023
One of the spare parts, the reports say, was a significant quantity of expired medical kits containing casings that could be used by the Space Shuttle. In this way, NASA became an eBay buyer for a day (or several).
And not only that, the engineer responsible for one of these initiatives even received an award for his ability to find creative solutions to problems.
Who would have thought that NASA would end up buying parts for a spacecraft on eBay? But in the end, the important thing is to find a solution and in this case, NASA did.
