NASA Spacewalk
December 18, 2013 by staff
NASA Spacewalk, The International Space Station is shown with the backdrop of Earth in this image taken by an STS-132 crew member on space shuttle Atlantis after the station and shuttle began their post-undocking relative separation on May 23, 2010. The astronauts aboard the International Space Station dimmed the lights, turned off unnecessary equipment and put off science work on Dec. 12 as NASA scrambled to figure out what’s wrong with one of two identical cooling loops that shut down Wednesday.
NASA has ordered up a series of urgent spacewalks to fix a broken cooling line at the International Space Station, a massive repair job that could stretch to Christmas Day.
Station managers decided Tuesday to send two American astronauts out as soon as possible to replace a pump with a bad valve. The task will require two and possibly three spacewalks on Saturday, Monday and next Wednesday – Christmas Day.
“The next week will be busy with spacewalks so not much tweeting from here,” NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio said from space via Twitter soon after the decision was announced.
The spacewalks are taking priority over the launch of a supply ship from Virginia. The commercial delivery had been scheduled for this week, but is now delayed until at least mid-January.
U.S.-led spacewalks have been on hold since July, when an Italian astronaut almost drowned because of water that leaked into his helmet.
NASA hopes to wrap up the pump swap in two spacewalks and not have to do a third on Christmas Day. Astronauts have ventured outside of their spaceship on Dec. 25 only once, way back in 1973 during Skylab, America’s first space station. Shuttle astronauts finished a series of spacewalks on the Hubble Space Telescope on Christmas Eve 1999.
NASA
Astronaut Rick Mastracchio is preparing to take a walk in space — or two or three.
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