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Ammonia leak causes trouble on spacewalk
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 07 - 08 - 2010


Two astronauts spent more than eight hours
outside the International Space Station, but were unable to make much
progress fixing a broken cooling system after part of it proved
difficult to disconnect and leaked dangerous ammonia, according to dpa.
Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson were to replace the broken
350-kilogramme ammonia cooling loop with a spare part stored about 10
metres away outside the ISS during the spacewalk that began at 1119
GMT.
But one of four ammonia hoses they had to disconnect became stuck
causing hours of delays in the work. When Wheelock finally freed the
stubborn hose, it leaked a large amount of ammonia, prompting
concerns about exposure to coolant. The astronauts made sure to
"bake" any ammonia flakes off their suits by exposing themselves to
sunlight and further decontaminated once back inside ISS.
The ammonia cooling loop was then left in place and a second
spacewalk on Wednesday, originally to hook up cables and wire the new
part into the station, will now focus on removing the old part and
replacing it.
The system is one of two used to keep electronics on the ISS from
overheating. Last Saturday, alarms were triggered signalling that the
ammonia-based refrigeration system on the ISS had failed due to a
power surge.
NASA officials stressed that the six crew members were in no
danger, and all critical and many non-critical systems on the ISS
were since operating as normal despite the malfunction.
The ISS could continue to operate without the cooling system
indefinitely, but would be in trouble if the second ammonia cooling
loop were to also fail before the first is replaced.
Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson had already trained to replace this
part, despite the effort being unplanned, as part of NASA's efforts
to prepare ISS crew members for contingencies aboard the station.
The US space agency had known that the cooling unit would
eventually need to be replaced after about 100,000 hours of use and
had installed four extra units outside the ISS as a precaution.


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