At this stage it has not been decided on a spacewalk to correct the malfunction, but if it becomes necessary, it will be the Russians who will go into space because it will not be possible to do this with the American spacesuits, due to a malfunction that caused the termination of a spacewalk several months ago
The decision to launch a cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station next week was postponed to Monday, December 16 due to the failure of the space station's cooling system which necessitated the shutdown of the backup systems.
Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft was expected to launch on December 18 from the Walfus Island launch center in Virginia. However, when some of the station's systems are disabled, the launch does not meet the criteria that allow it to be carried out during the next week, said Kenny Todd, the director of integration and operations of the space station.
"We have lost a vital function," he told the NASA television station today, adding that the six crew members are in good condition. "There are backup systems that are not working, but it is not something critical to the station's ongoing operation."
While a spacewalk is a possible means of correcting the malfunction, it is still too early to say what NASA and the other partners on the station will decide to do.
Flight controllers spent many hours inspecting the control valve that was responsible for causing the ammonia pumping to stop on December 12. The space station uses liquid ammonia to maintain the temperature, and pumping the ammonia through the external radiators makes it possible to cool the heat. Astronauts routinely perform spacewalks to repair parts of the ammonia system. The last such repairs were made in May when the 35th crew replaced a pump control box in the station's P6 component, just days before some of the crew returned home.
The pump on the space station is one of two systems that run external cooling circuits that automatically shut down today when it got too cold," NASA said in a Dec. 11 Twitter message.
"The pump has returned to operation, but we believe that the valve inside it may not be working well. Some of the electrical systems at the station switched to the second circuit and some non-essential devices were turned off. The crew was safe and will continue to work with the control personnel on the ground as they investigate the cause of the malfunction."
"Crew members are continuing with routine operations as much as possible, although they are running a reduced schedule as some of the experiments are not operating as normal.
One of the people helping NASA ground crews overcome the problem is astronaut Douglas Wilcock, who led three unscheduled spacewalks in 2010 to replace broken ammonia pumps in the S1 component (at the opposite end of the station) belonging to the same cooling loop.
Regardless of this, NASA froze spacewalks at the station following a water leak in one of the suits that caused Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano to return to the airlock in July of this year. Those who will be able to go into space will be the Russian cosmonauts, whose suits were manufactured separately by their country and were presented, for example, at the Olympic torch raising in November.
The faulty suit will be returned to Earth for an in-depth inspection the next time it docks at a SpaceX space station, and this is because its cargo spaceships, of the Dragon model, return to Earth with a soft landing. At this point such a flight is not expected until at least February.
