"Houston, we have managed to solve the problem" - The World

day Christmas Eve has been hard for astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins , who have spent more than seven hours outside the International Space Station to perform an emergency repair system Cooling of the orbital platform. But in the end their efforts were worth it, since all the objectives have been achieved and the walk was a success.

“What a magnificent view!” , commented Hopkins, 44, at the beginning of the walk, which started at 12.53 (CET Spanish). “In fact, you are on the Atlantic” , you replied a controller at Johnson Space Center from Houston (Texas).

Saturday, Mastracchio and Hopkins withdrew part of the cooling module on the starboard beam of the space station, a complex of 100,000 million dollars in which they collaborate fifteen countries that orbits about 385 miles above Earth.

cooling system failures recorded on December 11, but, for now, the problem not a threat for the six men working on the ISS.

Since last week the directors of the ISS mission decided it was necessary astronauts off for repair, and were scheduled three days of extravehicular work on 21, 23 and 25 December.

But during the work

Saturday apparently entered water in part of the space suit Mastracchio in the Quest airlock, used for compression and decompression step inside to the outside of the ISS and vice versa.

This has forced

use a spare spacesuit during the second exit, but needed another day to fit measures Mastracchio , and therefore the second outlet has been postponed to Tuesday .

Tuesday

task was to install a new ammonia and, as all work is successfully completed, the technical mission believe a third spacewalk not required on Christmas Day .

cooling problem forced the postponement, at least until January 13, the launch of an Antares rocket will boost the Cygnus cargo capsule, the company Orbital Sciences, one of the first trips to the ISS resupply undertaken by the private sector.

This has been 176th spacewalk that perform operations astronauts to repair and maintenance of the ISS, which was launched in 1998 and has been operating since November 2000.

Cooling is crucial to the operations of the ISS and while only one of the devices can support critical systems and maintain the laboratory operations needed both to avoid non-essential equipment outages .

Although the six astronauts who now reside on the ISS were never in danger because the problem in the cooling system, onboard activities were cut, especially in the laboratory that has stopped all investigations .

Besides

Mastracchio and Hopkins, the current ISS crew compose Japanese Koichi Wakata and Russian Oleg Kotov, with the rank of major, Mikhail Tiurin and Sergey Ryazanskiy.