Repaired coolant leak International Space Station - RTVE

J. PEDREIRA ‘WICHO’
(Special RTVE.es)

Although it was an unplanned spacewalk but for which they had trained Chris Cassidy and Thomas Marshburn, with the help of Chris Hadfield from the inside, seem to have managed to repair the coolant leak International Space Station detected last Thursday.

This

flipped a subsystem called Pump Flow Control Subassembly , which is the contains pumps and valves cooling loop affected the other of the three parts that were on board, and preliminary indications suggest that after the change there is no leakage of ammonia, at least certainly not as great as that sought redress.

situation under control

This leakage was forced to stop one of the cooling circuits of the station’s solar panels, and the solar panel also associated, otherwise the electronics that makes it work would have burned.

Anyway

Station can run smoothly on this configuration , it provides eight channels of generation and distribution of electricity, so the repair could actually have been postponed.

But mission managers decided to take advantage of Cassidy and Marshburn had previously worked in the area of ??the Station and use his experience, which has proven to be an excellent idea, as they got there ahead of schedule, despite being on one end of the station.

also have prepared through such operations as part of their training , there are about a dozen scenarios for which all astronauts train in case although it is not expected to have to carry them out, were the whole time ahead of schedule, and in fact in less than three hours had changed by the new unit.

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Cassidy and Marshburn

had, in addition to Hadfield, supported by ground crews, who had studied all the steps they had to give, including the tasks they would undertake during a spacewalk by simulated Cristoforetti Samantha and Terry Virts in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory , the huge pool Johnson Space Center which includes a reproduction inside the station.

Not bad

as climax to stay Marshburn, who is scheduled to return to Earth on Monday at the station, is not bad as an example of the responsiveness of the Team crew and mission control to

remains for a little later fill the ammonia lost up to 25 kilos of circuit capacity that has been affected by the leak, but that is a task that is carried out and when the recount station with six crew again.