Fri, Aug 13, 2010
Faulty Ammonia Pump Removed During Spacewalk
Expedition 24 Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell
Dyson have completed the second of three spacewalks to remove the
failed ammonia coolant Pump Module on the S1 truss of the
International Space Station that failed July 31. Their spacewalk
ended at 1553 EDT Wednesday.
NASA Image
Wheelock successfully closed the quick disconnect valve for the
final fluid connector for the failed ammonia pump module. Then he
successfully detached the final fluid line from the failed ammonia
pump module. Caldwell Dyson disconnected five electrical and data
cables while Wheelock broke torque and removed four bolts from the
old pump. The pump module then was extracted from the truss through
the use of a grapple bar and installed on a payload bracket on the
Mobile Base System on the station’s truss.
With the failed pump module safely stowed on the truss, Caldwell
Dyson prepared the spare pump for installation on the next
spacewalk, which is scheduled for Monday, August 16. A
fourth spacewalk may be required to clean up the work site.
In response to the power reconfiguration steps last weekend, the
science team worked quickly to establish a plan to preserve
experiment samples in the Japanese Experiment Module freezer. The
on-orbit crew was able to transfer all the samples from the freezer
in the Kibo laboratory to an operating freezer. No sciences samples
were lost due to the pump module anomaly.
NASA Image
While the crew schedule has been interrupted to support the
newly added spacewalks, the payload ground teams have been working
closely with mission controllers to preserve and re-plan high
priority activities. Other activities that can be rescheduled with
little or no impact are being postponed to a later date.
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