An emergency leak repair at the International Space Station (ISS) may take weeks or even months for NASA to confirm that Saturday’s spacewalk fixed the problem, NASA officials said.
In the 5.5-hour spacewalk, two astronauts replaced a faulty pump control box that was believed to be the source of a leak of ammonia coolant.
“We are happy, very happy,” said Joel Montalbano, deputy ISS program manager. “We didn’t see any obvious [new] signs of leaks.” Unlike most spacewalks from the station which are planned well in advance, Saturday’s repair mission was organized quickly after ammonia fluid was seen on Thursday floating outside the station.
Montalbano said it could take four or five weeks or even “a few weeks” longer “for us to look at the system, to evaluate the system and to make sure we did and indeed stop the leak.” Engineers on the ground will be monitoring the system every day.
Ammonia runs in loops through systems that cool the spacecraft’s eight power supply channels generated by eight solar panels.
“We are not at a point, we must go out to refill the loop,” said NASA flight director Ed Van Cise.
The power channel that had the leaking coolant has been turned off in order to conduct the repair, Van Cise said. It will remain closed down for some time.
Despite only seven functioning power channels, the Russian Soyuz capsule will undock as scheduled from the space station on Monday, carrying back to Earth three astronauts.
ISS commander Chris Hadfield of Canada, flight engineer Tom Marshburn of the US and Roman Romanenko of Russia will leave the space station on board in the Soyuz at 2308 GMT on Monday. Pavel Vinogradov of the Russian Federal Space Agency will take over the duty as the new commander.