The last remnant of the once glorious space program, the International Space Station, is running into some trouble.
Just a couple of days ago, a cooling line was found to be malfunctioning.
For this reason, NASA has ordered an emergency spacewalk to inspect and repair the ailing line. There will be three separate spacewalks, involving Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins, two of the astronauts currently manning the space station.
The problem started with a broken valve on December 11, which then resulted in the malfunction of the cooling line, which carries ammonia outside the station to keep instruments cool.
All non essential equipment had to be shut down, and any running experiment had to be halted. A cargo mission was postponed too, until the problem is resolved.
The broken pump had already been replaced three years ago.
Orbital Science, which was to send a cargo this week to the space station, had to postpone the launch. Most of the cargo contains supplies for the station. These were usually done by the Space Shuttle until retirement. The cargo will be rescheduled for the month of January.
The astronauts on board are not in danger.
More spacewalks will be scheduled for the Russian astronaut, but are unrelated to the mechanical problem. Those will be done to install equipment on the external side of the Russian segment of the International Space Station.
Source : Al Jazeera/ 12.18.13
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