14 DAY TRIAL // Officials at the American space agency announce that astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) will be conducting two emergency spacewalks this week. The decision was taken following the cooling system error that appeared late on Saturday. The malfunction affected a critical system that was destined to remove excess heat from a number of modules and laboratories aboard the orbital facility, and all these areas were affected. The extra-vehicular activities (EVA) are meant to fix all damages caused by the glitch, and to restore things to normal, Space reports.
American astronauts Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson, both from NASA, will be carrying out the EVA, the first of which may take place as soon as Thursday. Mission planners at NASA hope that the spacewalks will enable them to restart some of the systems they had to shut down after a circuit breaker tripped two days ago, causing the pump module in Loop A of the ISS cooling system to shut down. Plans for the two EVA are currently being analyzed at NASA, and experts will come up with a decision soon.
“The crew is being informed that replanning for alternate spacewalk activity is underway,” says an official statement from NASA. They already said in a separate announcement that the ISS is stable after the Loop A shutdown. The announcement also underlines that the error poses no danger to the six astronauts that make up the Expedition 24 crew. However, space agency officials want the situation resolves as soon as possible, given that the malfunction could not be solved using existing troubleshooting methodology.
“An attempt overnight Sunday to close the circuit breaker and restart the Pump Module was not successful,” NASA says in the same document. Representatives also said that they will make additional data available later today, at 4 pm EDT (2000 GMT). The astronauts aboard the station are now past the initial shock they had after the cooling system gave way. They've already closed all systems that generate heat, which should prevent the overloading of Loop B. The cooling system is meant to prevent the station from overheating, and so astronauts have orders to keep everything as cool as possible until the loop is back online.