14 DAY TRIAL // After taking into account the progress made during the first two spacewalks destined to repair the broken ammonia pump on the International Space Station (ISS), NASA experts established that four excursions in space will be necessary to complete the job.
Engineers and mission planners say that there is no other, faster way of solving the problem, which has incapacitated the Loop A circuit of the station's cooling system entirely.
The first extravehicular activity (EVA) destined to address the problem took place on Saturday, August 7, while the second on took place yesterday, August 11.
NASA mission specialists and astronauts Douglas Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson managed to successfully remove the ammonia pump that powers the Loop, but did not replace it with a new one yet.
According to officials at the American space agency, the ISS has four extra ammonia pumps stored away as spares, so replacing the damaged one is not a problem.
At first, it was estimated that only 2 EVA will be required to complete the repairs, but recent developments have raised that number to 4. The third EVA will take place on Monday, August 16.
The extra day secured from the delay will be used to allow ground crews and the six astronauts aboard the ISS some much-needed rest.
“We've got an enormous workforce that has, in a large part, dropped everything while we work on this,” says the ISS program manager, Mike Suffredini, quoted by Space.
“This team is good, but there's just so many hours in a spacewalk and there's a lot of work left to be done to get ourselves all buttoned up in the same condition we were before we started these EVAs,” the official adds.
At this point, the ISS is home to three American astronauts and three Russian cosmonauts, who are part of the Expedition 24 crew.
As the cooling system situation develops, the crew is more and more redirected from its usual science duties to help out with the repair efforts.
NASA is adamant that the failure, which occurred July 31, did not put the astronauts in danger at any time.
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