Space Forum / Shuttle / April 2008

A ground controller, person who is looking at the telemetry data, saw that
the engine had been shut down because of failing sensors, and the engine
itself was fine. He then saw similar things happening on a set of sensors
for another engine, so he commanded the capcom to tell the crew to disable
those sensors - in another words, inhibiting the control systems from
reacting to out-of-limits data output from the sensors. That then preventing
the engine control logic from shutting down the engine that was in danger of
being shut down without a valid reason.

There have been previous usenet discussions of this subject. One of them
points out that if another engine had been shut down as threathened, the ET
would have made a hard, unsafe and unacceptable landing to Saudi-Arabia, and
the Orbiter would perhaps have tried a TAL or AOA abort.

This was one of the cases in which ground controller saved the day.