Two NASA astronauts kicked off the first of four tightly-packed spacewalks outside the International Space Station (ISS) Wednesday by carefully overhauling part of the orbital laboratory’s cooling system despite the last-minute find of a few toxic ammonia flakes.ISS Expedition 14 commander Michael Lopez-Alegria and flight engineer Sunita Williams successfully switched four liquid ammonia coolant lines from a temporary set up to their permanent configuration during almost eight hours of spacewalking work high above the Earth.
The work was slow and demanding, but paid off as Lopez-Alegria and Williams activating the new cooling loop near the midpoint of the seven-hour, 55-minute spacewalk.
The only hint of leaking ammonia occurred near the end of the spacewalk, when Williams reported about four small “flakes” of frozen, yet toxic, ammonia drifting out of a fluid line cap during a completely different task.
Source: space.com
Tags: spacewalk | flight | ammonia | Technology | Space Station | NASA | ISS | expedition | alegria
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