1. Space Station

Category Archives: Space Station

Spacewalkers set to troubleshoot space station's ammonia coolant leak

Posted on by

On Saturday NASA will try to fix the leak that released a stream of white frozen flakes into space. The crew on the International Space Station is not in danger and the space station is continuing to operate normally. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

By Miriam Kramer Space.com

Astronauts on the International Space Station are gearing up to perform an emergency spacewalk Saturday to hunt for an ammonia leak in the orbiting laboratory's cooling system.

NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy are planning to spend more than six hours outside the station to find, and possibly repair, the ammonia coolant leak.

The spacewalk comes just two days after the six-man crew of the space station noticed frozen flakes from an ammonia leak on one of the eight winglike solar arrays responsible for supplying power to the station. Planning a space station spacewalk repair in such a short time frame is unprecedented, NASA officials said. [Infographic: How the Space Station's Cooling System Works]

It also comes just two days before Marshburn and two crewmates, station commander Chris Hadfield of Canada and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, are due to return home. Monday's departure will not be affected by the spacewalk, NASA officials said.

The space station crew is in no danger, and the pump has been turned off in order to slow the rate of the leak, mission managers said. The leak is on the space station's P6 truss, at the leftmost side of the outpost's football field-length main truss.

NASA's space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, said the spacewalk's "objective is to get a look at the leak."

Spacewalk repair on tap A team of NASA officials gave the go-ahead late Friday for the spacewalk to begin at 8:15 a.m. ET Saturday. The plan calls for Cassidy and Marshburn to float outside of the station to inspect the leaking loop. Then they'll try to replace an ammonia coolant pump that station engineers suspect may be the source of the leak.

Marshburn and Cassidy have both conducted three spacewalks two of them together during their 2009 mission on the space shuttle Endeavour. This spacewalk is expected to take a little more than six hours. "The crew is very familiar in this area," Norm Knight, NASA chief flight director, said during a briefing on Friday. This type of repair, however, is unprecedented in the space station's history, he added.

The rest is here:

Spacewalkers set to troubleshoot space station's ammonia coolant leak

Spacewalkers head out to fix space station's coolant leak – if they can

Posted on by

LIVE VIDEO Expedition 35 crew members Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn conduct a spacewalk on the International Space Station to inspect and possibly stop a leak of ammonia coolant.

By Alan Boyle, Science Editor, NBC News

Two NASA astronauts began a spacewalk aimed at troubleshooting an ammonia leak in the coolant system for one of the International Space Station's massive solar arrays on Saturday, just two days after the problem was detected.

The operation ranks as one of the fastest turnarounds ever for a space station repair a feat that impressed the orbital outpost's Canadian commander, Chris Hadfield. "The whole team is ticking like clockwork. ... I am so proud to be commander of this crew," he wrote in a Twitter update. "Such great, capable, fun people."

Hadfield is serving as the inside man for the spacewalk, and will help make sure that NASA spacewalkers Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy stay on track during an outing that's expected to last six and a half hours.

The spacewalk got underway at 8:44 a.m. ET, about a half-hour later than originally planned, but the two veteran spacefliers made quick progress so quick that Mission Control had to remind them to stop and do safety checks on their spacesuits. "You guys got to the worksite a little faster than we were keeping up with," said Mike Fincke, an astronaut who was guiding the duo from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Marshburn and Cassidy are due to check a 260-pound (118-kilogram) pump box that's thought to be the source of the leak, and possibly replace it with a spare. The procedure is considered one of the "Big 12" spacewalk tasks for long-term station maintenance, and the astronauts were trained to do the swap before they launched. Nevertheless, the two-day turnaround is "precedent-setting" for space station operations, said Norm Knight, NASA's chief flight director.

Station crew members alerted Mission Control to the leak on Thursday when they saw "snowflakes" of frozen ammonia floating away from an area around the pump box. That area had been losing coolant at the rate of about 5 pounds (2.27 kilograms) per year, said Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager. On Thursday, the rate jumped to 5 pounds a day.

NASA is trying to fix an ammonia leak on the International Space Station. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

Suffredini said the leak isn't putting the crew in any danger, and the station could manage without that particular coolant systems if it had to. The system services only one of the station's eight 112-foot-long (34-meter-long) solar arrays. For the time being, power from that array is being routed through the station's other electrical channels, Suffredini said.

Excerpt from:

Spacewalkers head out to fix space station's coolant leak – if they can

Astronauts Taking Spacewalk to Fix Space Station Ammonia Leak Today: Watch Live

Posted on by

Two NASA astronauts will venture outside the International Space Station on an emergency spacewalk today (May 11) in an attempt to o fix a leak of ammonia coolant.

NASA's Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn will perform the unprecedented spacewalk. The spacewalk will start at 8:15 a.m. EDT (1115 GMT) with NASA TV coverage beginning at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT). You canwatch the spacewalk here on SPACE.comvia NASA TV.

The six residents of the orbiting laboratory noticedfrozen flakes of ammonialeaking from a station coolant loop on the leftmost side of the space station on Thursday (May 9). Liquid ammonia is a vital coolant for chilling the electronics that produce the outpost's power. [Emergency Spacewalk to Fix Space Station Leak in Photos]

"The plan for this EVA [spacewalk] really is to see if we can identify the leak," Mike Suffredini, NASA's International Space Station program manager said during a briefing yesterday. "The plan is to change out the pump on this particular EVA. The most likely sources of the leak is this particular pump."

The space station crew is in no danger, NASA officials said, but the pump responsible for the movement of ammonia through that part of the system was shut off in order to conserve coolant.

Spacewalk repair on tap

For today's spacewalk, Cassidy and Marshburn plan to inspect, and potentially replace, an ammonia coolant pump controller box on the space station's Port 6 truss, a segment of the station's scaffolding-like backbone that is on the far left side. NASA space station engineers suspect the box may be the source of the leak since the ammonia was spotted coming from an area near it on Thursday.

This will not be the first time space station crewmembers have spacewalked to repair an ammonia leak on the space station's cooling sytem.

NASA's Sunita Williams and Japanese spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshide took a spacewalk to correct a leak in a coolant loop on theInternational Space Station's Port 6 truss (its scaffolding-like backbone). The 2012 coolant leak was in the same loop as the current leak, but engineers don't yet know if the two leaks are related.

The station's Port 6 truss is the oldest piece of the space station's backbone and carries two of the outpost's eight wing-like solar arrays. It was launched in November 2000 and originally installed on the station's roof, extending up. In 2007, visiting shuttle astronauts relocated the P6 truss to its final location on the station's far left side.

View post:

Astronauts Taking Spacewalk to Fix Space Station Ammonia Leak Today: Watch Live

Leak detected outside International Space Station

Posted on by

The sun is about to come up over the South Pacific Ocean in this colorful scene photographed by one of the Expedition 35 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station between. (NASA)

8:20 p.m. CDT, May 9, 2013

Crew members at the orbital outpost spotted white flakes of ammonia floating away from the space station at about 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) on Thursday, NASA said, and fixing the leak might require that a portion of the station's cooling system be shut down for about 48 hours.

"The station continues to operate normally otherwise and the crew is in no danger," it said.

In an audio exchange posted on the agency's website, Commander Chris Hadfield, who is Canadian, said he could see "a very steady stream of flakes or bits" coming from the area of one of several cooling loops.

Officials said the leak appeared to be getting worse.

The ammonia flakes were seen floating away from an area of the space station's P6 truss structure, the agency said. It was not clear whether it was related to a previous leak in late 2012.

Ammonia is used to cool the equipment that provides power to the station's systems, NASA said. Each array of solar battery cells has its own cooling loop.

The space station, which is staffed by rotating crews of six astronauts and cosmonauts, is a $100 billion research outpost owned by the United States and Russia in partnership with Europe, Japan and Canada.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Mohammad Zargham)

View post:

Leak detected outside International Space Station

Ammonia leak detected outside International Space Station

Posted on by

(Reuters) - An ammonia leak was detected in the cooling system outside of the International Space Station on Thursday, but no crew members are in danger and the station is operating normally, the U.S. space agency NASA said on its website.

Crew members at the orbital outpost spotted white flakes of ammonia floating away from the space station at about 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) on Thursday, NASA said, and fixing the leak might require that a portion of the station's cooling system be shut down for about 48 hours.

"The station continues to operate normally otherwise and the crew is in no danger," it said.

In an audio exchange posted on the agency's website, Commander Chris Hadfield, who is Canadian, said he could see "a very steady stream of flakes or bits" coming from the area of one of several cooling loops.

Officials said the leak appeared to be getting worse.

The ammonia flakes were seen floating away from an area of the space station's P6 truss structure, the agency said. It was not clear whether it was related to a previous leak in late 2012.

Ammonia is used to cool the equipment that provides power to the station's systems, NASA said. Each array of solar battery cells has its own cooling loop.

The space station, which is staffed by rotating crews of six astronauts and cosmonauts, is a $100 billion research outpost owned by the United States and Russia in partnership with Europe, Japan and Canada.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Mohammad Zargham)

Read the original:

Ammonia leak detected outside International Space Station

Space station leaking ammonia

Posted on by

By CNN Staff

updated 8:25 PM EDT, Thu May 9, 2013

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- The International Space Station is once again leaking ammonia from a cooling system, NASA said Thursday in a news release.

The crew is not in danger, NASA said.

The space station crew reported seeing small white flakes floating away from the station, the space agency said, So NASA helped locate the leak with external cameras while the crew used hand-held cameras pointed out windows.

The leak was in a cooling loop in a solar array that has leaked before. NASA said crew members tried to fix the leak in November. It is unclear whether this is the same leak or a new one.

The cooling system could shut down within 24 hours, NASA said. It is devising a plan to reroute other sources of power.

Three crew members -- commander Chris Hadfield of Canada, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko -- are scheduled to leave the station on Monday at 7:08 p.m. ET.

Hadfield asked NASA if the leak will affect the undocking. Capsule Communicator Doug Wheelock said officials at the Mission Control Center in Houston don't see anything that they can't overcome technically, but they would have more information in the morning.

See the original post here:

Space station leaking ammonia

Space Station Suffers Troubling Coolant Leak

Posted on by

Astronauts on the International Space Station have discovered a leak of ammonia coolant on their orbiting habitat, and NASA is looking into the problem, though it poses no immediate danger to the crew, officials said today (May 9).

The space station uses chilled liquid ammonia to cool down the power systems on its eight giant solar array panels. A minor leak of this ammonia was first noticed in 2007, and NASA has been studying the issue ever since.

In November 2012 two astronauts took a spacewalk to fix the problem, rewiring some coolant lines and installing a spare radiator due to fears the original radiator was damaged by a micrometeorite impact.

NEWS: Docked! Soyuz Takes Shortcut to Space Station

At the time, those measures appeared to fix the problem, but today astronauts on the football field-size space station noticed a steady stream of frozen ammonia flakes leaking from the area of the suspect coolant loop in the Photovoltaic Thermal Control System (PVTCS).

"It is in the same area, but we don't know whether it's the same leak," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries of the Johnson Space Center in Houston told SPACE.com. Humphries said the agency was taking the leak seriously because it affects an important system if they lose the ability to cool that particular solar array, it won't be able to generate power for the station. In fact, the leak has worsened to the point that Mission Control expects that particular loop to shut down within the next 24 hours.

However, "the crew is in no danger," Humphries stressed. It's too soon to speculate on a possible spacewalk or other measure to deal with the issue, he added.

Mission Control has been discussing the problem with the astronauts on the station throughout the afternoon.

NEWS: Olympic Torch to Take a Space Walk

"What you guys have provided in the way of imagery and video has been just like gold to us on the ground," astronaut Doug Wheelock from Mission Control radioed to space station commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut. "We are fairly confident that it's coming from the vicinity of the TCS." However, flight controllers noted they were still unable to pinpoint the leak's exact location.

Link:

Space Station Suffers Troubling Coolant Leak

Space station leaking coolant

Posted on by

NASA

This image from a NASA space shuttle mission shows the International Space Station in orbit. The space station is the size of a football field and home to six astronauts. (Image was taken on Feb. 10, 2010.)

By Clara Moskowitz Space.com

Astronauts on the International Space Station have discovered a leak of ammonia coolant on their orbiting habitat, and NASA is looking into the problem, though it poses no immediate danger to the crew, officials said Thursday.

The space station uses chilled liquid ammonia to cool down the power systems on its eight giant solar array panels. A minor leak of this ammonia was first noticed in 2007, and NASA has been studying the issue ever since. In November 2012 two astronauts took a spacewalk to fix the problem, rewiring some coolant lines and installing a spare radiator due to fears the original radiator was damaged by a micrometeorite impact.

At the time, those measures appeared to fix the problem, but today astronauts on the football field-size space station noticed a steady stream of frozen ammonia flakes leaking from the area of the suspect coolant loop in the Photovoltaic Thermal Control System (PVTCS). [Gallery: Building the International Space Station]

"It is in the same area, but we don't know whether it's the same leak," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries of the Johnson Space Center in Houston told Space.com. Humphries said the agency was taking the leak seriously because it affects an important system if they loose the ability to cool that particular solar array, it won't be able to generate power for the station. In fact, the leak has worsened to the point that Mission Control expects that particular loop to shut down within the next 24 hours.

However, "the crew is in no danger," Humphries stressed. It's too soon to speculate on a possible spacewalk or other measure to deal with the issue, he added.

Mission Control has been discussing the problem with the astronauts on the station throughout the afternoon.

"What you guys have provided in the way of imagery and video has been just like gold to us on the ground," astronaut Doug Wheelock from Mission Control radioed to space station commander Chris Hadfield, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut. "We are fairly confident that it's coming from the vicinity of the TCS." However, flight controllers noted they were still unable to pinpoint the leak's exact location.

Read this article:

Space station leaking coolant


  1. Space Station