Space station drama as cooling system fails

[Elmore Furth]

Source: Associated Press

WASHINGTON — A failure of the cooling system on the International Space Station forced astronauts to re-route power Sunday as NASA planned emergency spacewalks to fix the problem.

One of two cooling loops shut down Saturday night, triggering alarms throughout the orbiting station, which is manned by three Russian and three American astronauts.

NASA said the crew is not in any danger, but an attempt overnight to close the circuit breaker and restart the pump module that feeds the vital ammonia to the cooling system failed.

Astronauts closed down two of the gyroscopes that position the station as they re-routed power from the Destiny Laboratory research module to keep the temperature system stable. One gyroscope was later put back on line.


Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hbwvcB_naTNmo4j3b0ibORKLwhBA

[1620rock]

1. Godspeed on the fix.

[Fearless]

2. American components... Russian components... all made in Taiwan! n/t

[Trajan]

3. I would venture a guess ...

That the pump module is 'shorted' at it's power input, which will just keep blowing the breaker, no matter how many times you try ...

Which would mean they need a new pump module, or fix what is causing the pump to blow fuses .... lame ass armchair troubleshooting ...

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. Open a window?

[Blandocyte]

5. In space, no one can hear you call the HVAC guy

Are Hannity and Palin trying to make people think it was Russian sabotage yet?

[txlibdem]

6. I'm sorry, Dave.

I'm afraid I can't do that. Why don't you go outside and try to fix it.

[Xenotime]

7. It's time to bring everybody back and let the station drift out into space.

[sofa king]

8. That's the one thing it won't do.

Every object in low-earth orbit, left to itself, decays, or inexorably falls back into the atmosphere and eventually reenters. That's because there is still some atmosphere even 300 miles up in space, and therefore there is resistance which slows the orbiting vehicle down unless it periodically expends reaction mass to bump it back up to its intended orbit (there are alternative ways to maintain orbit, but none are regularly used). Magnetic fields and solar winds also play a role in orbit decay, and probably other processes as well.

Every space station ever orbited (except this one--so far) has eventually decayed and reentered the atmosphere. Skylab left a debris footprint across a good chunk of Australia. Mir disintegrated over the South Pacific. The Salyut stations were generally much smaller and didn't create as much of a buzz when they came down, but they all did.

This one will, too, unless we deem it to be worthy of the expense to maintain its orbit indefinitely, or to kick it up into an orbit so high that it can't come down for decades or centuries.

(Edit: I might as well just come out and say it: Those who don't understand the mechanics of space travel are always the ones who want to spend that money here on earth, instead. Then they drive their Kevlar-and-plastic cars home, unzip their Velcro flies, slide onto their polyester-stuffed couches, and watch satellite television, safe in the knowledge that space travel means nothing to them.)

[truedelphi]

9. Thank you for all the information.

I had no idea that 300 miles up and out there was still friction and what not.

In any case, I hope the astronauts keep safe and are able to get home okay.