Category Archives: Space Station

A spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (May 11) appeared to fix a leak of liquid ammonia, though astronauts and Mission Control will be in wait-and-see mode until they know for sure if the repairs succeeded.

Two NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn ventured outside the football field-size orbital complex to investigate a leak that had sprung in the station's cooling system, which uses liquid ammonia to transfer heat away from electronic power systems. Although they found no signs of damage that might explain the leak, the spacewalkers replaced a suspect coolant pump, which appeared to halt the flow of ammonia for now.

It will be weeks, or even months, though, before it's clear if the leak has fully stopped. [Emergency Spacewalk to Fix Space Station Leak in Photos]

"The crew looked and watched for any obvious signs of leaks and didn't see anything," Joel Montalbano, deputy space station program manager, said during a press conference after the spacewalk today at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. "We're very happy."

Engineers on the ground will continue to study the troubled area in hopes of understanding what caused the leak.

"We'll see if anything becomes obvious," said NASA flight director Ed Van Cise. "From what we saw during the EVA [extravehicular activity, or spacewalk] itself, nothing really stood out in terms of what may have been the culprit."

NASA officials said they don't yet know if the problem is related to a leak that was spotted in the same coolant channel in 2007. That leak was so slow it posed no immediate problem, and a November 2012 spacewalk that replaced a radiator for the system appeared to stop it.

On Thursday (May 9), the six-man crew of the space station's Expedition 35 mission noticed the leak had worsened, with visible white snowflakes of frozen ammonia floating out into space.

"It was just two days ago that the slight leak we were observing in the thermal control system took a change to where it was a pretty dramatic leak," Van Cise said.

The urgency of the problem caused NASA to "pretty much bring everyone to the table" to address the situation and plan the spacewalk at the last minute, he added. "Space station is a very large, complicated and complex vehicle built all across the world. There are going to be engineers and very smart people all over the place that need to help us address these situations. We draw upon that when we have to and when the vehicle throws something at us that we need all those resources."

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After Last-Minute Spacewalk Fix, It's Wait-and-See on Space Station

The Space Station-Tekkit
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Kerbal Space Program - Modular Space Station Completed - Example
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Let #39;s Fly Kerbal Space Program: series 2, ep.23, First Space Station Module
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Star Trek The Video Game - Part 1 - Vulcan Space station - Kirk - Hard
Star Trek The Video Game Playthrough as Kirk on a epic adventure with Spock as his trusted side kick. We begin by having to bail out some as always arrogant ...

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Space Station Live: May 7, 2013
The Space Station Live recap video for May 7, 2013. Watch the full Space Station Live broadcast weekdays on NASA TV at 10 a.m. CDT. http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

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Space Station Live: May 7, 2013 - Video

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Astronauts on the International Space Station are preparing for a possible emergency spacewalk tomorrow (May 11) to fix a serious leak of ammonia coolant on the orbiting laboratory.

On Thursday (May 9), the six residents of the station noticed frozen flakes of ammonia leaking from a coolant loop affixed to one of the eight solar arrays responsible for supplying power to the station. The crew is in no danger, NASA officials say, but if the leak continues, it could cause a shutdown in the loop, possibly preventing the array from generating power.

Space station commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency announced the possibility of the emergency spacewalk via Twitter (where he posts as @Cmdr_Hadfield) early on Friday. [How the Space Station's Cooling System Works (Infographic)]

"Good Morning, Earth! Big change in plans, spacewalk tomorrow, Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn are getting suits and airlock ready," Hadfield wrote. "Cool!"

NASA has not yet made an official decision on whether to conduct the spacewalk, and is still investigating the problem.

"The crew is not in danger, and the station continues to operate normally otherwise," agency officials wrote today in a statement. "Work is underway to reroute power channels to maintain full operation of the systems normally controlled by the solar array that is cooled by the suspect loop."

If the spacewalk goes forward, Cassidy and Marshburn both NASA astronauts will float outside the station to inspect the leak and possibly attempt to fix it.

"Suddenly very busy! Ammonia leak on the outside of station means that Cassidy and I will be doing a spacewalk tomorrow to try and repair it," Marshburn posted on Twitter (@AstroMarshburn) Friday.

This is not the first time space station crewmembers have spacewalked to repair a coolant leak. Last year, NASA's Sunita Williams and Japanese spaceflyer Akihiko Hoshidu took a spacewalk to troubleshoot a leak in a coolant loop on the station's Port 6 truss (its scaffolding-like backbone). The 2012coolant leak was in the same loop as the current leak, but engineers don't yet know if the two leaks are related.

On the ground, astronauts Terry Virts of NASA and Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency are practicing the routine for tomorrow's potential spacewalk in the Johnson Space Center's Neutral Buoyancy Lab in Houston. This lab is a giant swimming pool that holds a full-scale mock-up of the International Space Stationused for astronaut training.

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Astronauts May Take Emergency Spacewalk to Fix Space Station Leak

10 May 2013 Last updated at 03:37 ET

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ISS Commander Chris Hadfield describes "a very steady stream of flakes"

Astronauts on the International Space Station are dealing with a leak in the orbiting platform's cooling system.

The crew spotted particles of ammonia drifting away from the laboratory on Thursday.

Liquid ammonia is used to extract the heat that builds up in electronic systems, dumping that excess energy to space through an array of radiators.

Nasa says the crew is in no danger. A spacewalk might be needed to inspect and fix the site of the leak.

The seepage is coming from the station's port side, at the far end of the backbone, or truss, structure that holds one of the laboratory's huge sets of solar arrays.

Commander Chris Hadfield reported seeing "a very steady stream of flakes".

"They were coming out cleanly and repeatedly enough that it looked like it was a point source they were coming from," he added.

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Space station springs ammonia leak

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.

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Spacewalkers get set to troubleshoot space station's ammonia coolant leak