14 DAY TRIAL // As we were reporting a couple of days ago, the new module on the International Space Station (ISS), Tranquility, was “unofficially” opened by the joint crew currently aboard the orbital lab. In a late Saturday spacewalk, or extra-vehicular activity (EVA), NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick managed to tackle a difficult and dangerous plumbing job. They had to connect a number of liquid ammonia hoses between Node 3 and its new home, the Unity module aboard the ISS.
The ammonia coolant is absolutely necessary for the new module to be properly cooled. When the system is brought online, this will enable astronauts to live and work inside the 7-meter room, which will also be endowed with a massive observations deck, the Cupola. This dome features six windows, arranged like a petal around a seventh, central one, which is the largest ever flown into space. The Cupola will be installed on a Tranquility docking berth that faces toward Earth, so that astronauts find it easy to conduct observations of our planet, Space reports.
Thanks to Patrick and Behnken, the four liquid ammonia hoses that were needed to fully connect Node 3 to the ISS were installed into place in the allotted time. They had to tackle this job very carefully, as ammonia is a highly-toxic chemical that can pose serious threats to humans, and especially astronauts. The team experienced an incident, in which Patrick discovered a small leak of ammonia from one of the hoses. He reported to Mission Control that a few drops of the chemical bounced off his spacesuit glove, and off his helmet visor, but added that none appeared to have stuck to him.
If the astronauts were to have returned inside the ISS carrying even minute traces of the chemical, then they could have endangered the health and safety of all the other nine crew members. According to Behnken, the leak was similar to a brief puff of snowflakes. “It was about the kind of quantity of stuff that you would expect if you didn't empty the straw at the end of your drink bag,” Patrick says. After ensuring that the spacesuit was clean, the astronauts carried on with connecting the hoses to each other, as each large hose was made of several smaller ones. Then they installed insulating blankets on the hoses, and called it a day.