Two NASA astronauts have begun a spacewalk today to try to repair an ammonia leak discovered last Thursday at the International Space Station (ISS, its acronym in English), reported the U.S. space agency. Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy traveled to the ISS in 2009 on the shuttle Endeavour, and had previously undertaken a spacewalk to replace a battery in the same area where the leak is identified ammonia, Efe reported.
The crew of the space base on Thursday discovered a leak in the refrigerant circuit of the generator attached to one of the large solar panels on the base. The astronauts, six in all, no danger whatsoever, as stated by the NASA officials, but does not solve the problem, would have to disconnect the generator, which would undermine the power of the affected panel, reports Space.com. It is expected within a few hours a press conference at NASA to report the result of the work of Marshburn and Cassidy.
ISS has undergone several different coolant leakage points and Astronauts have been fixing, for the moment it is not known whether the detected now is a new or previous one has been played, according to NASA, but could it is a system that has already failed in November 2012.
manned program director of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, Alexei Krasnov, confirmed the agency Ria Novosti ammonia leak at the ISS, in the Russian segment of the base, but has downplayed the severity of the incident noting that not the first time it happens, France Press reports.
is expected that after five months in orbit, the commander of the current ISS crew, Canadian Chris Hadfield, return to Earth on Monday along with two other astronauts (American Tom Marshburn and Russian Roman Romannenko ) and received orders from Mission Control to continue with preparations.
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