Chris Hadfield in the Cupola of the ISS. Credit: NASA
He’s leaving space on Monday, but not before giving the world a memorable parting gift. ISS Commander Chris Hadfield has captured the attention and imagination of so many during his five-plus months in space via social media and with the many videos he’s recorded while on the International Space Station. This is his final video from the station, and according to his son Evan Hadfield — who has helped orchestrate the Commander’s barrage of tweets and images — it is also, coincidentally, the first real music video ever recorded in space.
“With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here’s Space Oddity, recorded on Station,” Hadfield tweeted. “A last glimpse of the World.”
As someone posted in the comments on this video, Hadfield is the new standard of incredible.
Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn take a minute with visors open to have their picture taken by Chris Hadfield, inside the ISS. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield.
The spacewalk outside the International Space Station was captured on film by the tweeting, Facebooking, social media maven and space station commander Chris Hadfield. “Amazing day,” he said. “EVA went off without a hitch. Great crew, phenomenal ground support and a supportive audience. Who could ask for anything more?”
How ’bout a picturesque view? We’ve got that too! See a collection of great images from the EVA, which — for the moment — appears to have been a success in fixing the leaking ammonia coolant system.
Cassidy and Marshburn work outside the ISS in the ‘approaching orbital sunset, the harshest of light, a blackness like endless velvet,’ said Hadfield. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield.Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn turn on their helmet lights ‘doing their best to light the universe on the dark side of the Earth,’ said Chris Hadfield. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield‘Climbing out of the airlock, quite the commute to work!’ said Chris Hadfield via Twitter.Chris Cassidy, Navy SEAL and lead spacewalker Saturday. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield.Dr. Tom Marshburn, well-dressed for a day’s work outdoors. Credit: NASA/CSA/Chris Hadfield.
NASA’s Curiosity rover reaches out in ‘handshake’ like gesture to welcome the end of solar conjunction and resumption of contact with Earth. This mosaic of images was snapped by Curiosity on Sol 262 (May 2) and shows her flexing the robotic arm with Mount Sharp in the background. Two drill holes are visible on the surface bedrock below the robotic arm’s turret. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer-(kenkremer.com)/Marco Di Lorenzo
NASA’s Curiosity rover reaches out in ‘handshake’ like gesture to welcome the end of solar conjunction and resumption of contact with Earth. This mosaic of images was snapped by Curiosity on Sol 262 (May 2, 2013) and shows her flexing the robotic arm with dramatic scenery of Mount Sharp in the background. Two drill holes are visible on the surface bedrock below the robotic arm’s turret where she discovered a habitable site.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer-(kenkremer.com)/Marco Di Lorenzo[/caption]
NASA’s Curiosity rover has reached out in a Martian ‘handshake’ like gesture welcoming the end of solar conjunction that marks the resumption of contact with her handlers back on Earth – evidenced in a new photo mosaic of images captured as the robot and her human handlers contemplate a short traverse to a 2nd drilling target in the next few days.
“We’ll move a small bit and then drill another hole,” said John Grotzinger to Universe Today. Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., leads NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory mission.
The rover science team and Grotzinger have selected that 2nd drill location and are itching to send the rover on her way to the bumpy spot called “Cumberland.”
Cumberland lies about nine feet (2.75 meters) west of the “John Klein’ outcrop where Curiosity conducted humanity’s first ever interplanetary drilling on the alien Martian surface in February 2013.
“We’ll confirm what we found in the John Klein hole,” Grotzinger told me.
Curiosity discovered a habitable zone at the John Klein drill site.
After pulverizing and carefully sifting the John Klein drill tailings, a powered, aspirin sized portion of the gray rock was fed into a trio of inlet ports atop the rovers deck and analyzed by Curiosity’s duo of miniaturized chemistry labs named SAM and Chemin inside her belly to check for the presence of organic molecules and determine the inorganic chemical composition.
‘Cumberland’ and ‘John Klein’ are patches of flat-lying bedrock shot through with pale colored calcium sulfate hydrated mineral veins and a bumpy surface texture at her current location inside the ‘Yellowknife Bay’ basin.
This patch of bedrock, called “Cumberland,” has been selected as the second target for drilling by NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. The rover has the capability to collect powdered material from inside the target rock and analyze that powder with laboratory instruments. The favored location for drilling into Cumberland is in the lower right portion of the image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
“The bumpiness is due to erosion-resistant nodules within the rock, which have been identified as concretions resulting from the action of mineral-laden water,” NASA said in a statement.
Curiosity snapped high resolution color images of Cumberland on Sol 192 (Feb. 19, 2013) as part of the ongoing data collection campaign to put Yellowknife Bay into scientific context and search for future drill targets.
The John Klein bore hole (drilled on Feb 8, 2013, Sol 182) is visible in our new photo mosaic above created by myself and my imaging partner Marco Di Lorenzo. It was stitched from a ‘Martian baker’s dozen’ of raw images captured on May 2 (Sol 262). and shows the hand-like tool turret positioned above the first pair of drill holes.
Our new Sol 262 mosaic illustrates that Curiosity is again fully functional and flexing the miracle arm following a relaxing month long period of ‘Spring Break’ when there was no two- way communication with Earth during April’s solar conjunction.
See below our Sol 169 panoramic context view of Curiosity inside Yellowknife Bay collecting spectroscopic science measurements at the John Klein outcrop.
Curiosity accomplished historic 1st drilling into Martian rock at John Klein outcrop on Feb 8, 2013 (Sol 182), shown in this context mosaic view of the Yellowknife Bay basin taken on Jan. 26 (Sol 169) – back dropped with Mount Sharp – where the robot is currently working. Curiosity will bore a 2nd drill hole soon following the resumption of contact with the end of the solar conjunction period. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer -(kenkremer.com)/Marco Di Lorenzo
Curiosity found that the fine-grained, sedimentary mudstone rock at the John Klein worksite inside the shallow depression known as Yellowknife Bay possesses significant amounts of phyllosilicate clay minerals; indicating the flow of nearly neutral liquid water and a habitat friendly to the possible origin of simple Martian microbial life forms eons ago.
Grotzinger also explained to Universe Today that Curiosity will soon to more capable than ever before.
“We’ll spend the next few sols transitioning over to new flight software that gives the rover additional capabilities’” said Grotzinger.
“Then we’ll spend some time testing out the science instruments on the B-side rover compute element – that we booted to before conjunction.”
Curiosity will spend a month or more at the Cumberland site to collect and completely analyze the drill tailings.
Then she’ll resume her epic trek to mysterious Mount Sharp, the 3.5 mile (5 km) high mountain that dominates her landing site and is her ultimate driving inside Gale Crater according to Grotzinger.
“After that [Cumberland] we’re likely to begin the trek to Mt. Sharp, though we’ll stop quickly to look at a few outcrops that we passed by on the way into Yellowknife Bay,” Grotzinger explained to Universe Today.
The Shaler outcrop passed by on the path into Yellowknife Bay is high on the list of stops during the year long journey to Mount Sharp, says Grotzinger. Read more details about Shaler in a new BBC story by Jonathan Amos – here – featuring our Shaler outcrop mosaic.
And don’t forget to “Send Your Name to Mars” aboard NASA’s MAVEN orbiter- details here. Deadline: July 1, 2013
This map shows the location of “Cumberland,” the second rock-drilling target for NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, in relation to the rover’s first drilling target, “John Klein,” within the southwestern lobe of a shallow depression called “Yellowknife Bay.” Cumberland, like John Klein, is a patch of flat-lying bedrock with pale veins and bumpy surface texture. The bumpiness is due to erosion-resistant nodules within the rock, which have been identified as concretions resulting from the action of mineral-laden water. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
The International Space Station (ISS) has grown tremendously in size and complexity and evolved significantly over 15 years of continuous human occupation from Nov. 2, 2000 to Nov. 2, 2015. Credit: NASA
Astronauts on the International Space Station doing an unplanned “emergency” spacewalk to fix an ammonia coolant leak outside the station. On Thursday, the ISS crew spotted small white flakes floating away from an area of the Station’s P6 truss structure, and noticed pressure drops in the control panel of the pump and flow control system for the power-supplying solar arrays. The ammonia coolant is vital to keeping the power control systems working and needs to be fixed. At this point the crew is not in any danger, but the leak does need to be fixed soon.
You can watch live in the window above. As of this writing, NASA astronauts Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy are just getting ready to head out the airlock, and plans call for them to spend more than six hours outside the station to find and hopefully repair the ammonia coolant leak.
Read our previous article here to find out more information about the leak.
This is the 168th spacewalk for maintenance and construction of the ISS.
The mighty Arecibo Radio Observatory is one of the most powerful radio telescopes ever built – it’s certainly the larger single aperture radio telescope on Earth, nestled into a natural sinkhole in Puerto Rico. We’re celebrating the 50th anniversary of the construction of the observatory with a special episode of Astronomy Cast.
A slide showing the P6 Truss, the location of the coolant leak on the International Space Station. Credit: NASA.
Astronauts on the International Space Station are preparing for a potential emergency spacewalk to fix an ammonia coolant leak outside the station. On Thursday, the ISS crew spotted small white flakes floating away from an area of the Station’s P6 truss structure, and noticed pressure drops in the control panel of the pump and flow control system for the power-supplying solar arrays.
UPDATE: At a press briefing on Friday afternoon, NASA officials announced that the ISS crew will perform a spacewalk starting early Saturday to address the ammonia leak.
“Suddenly very busy!” tweeted astronaut Tom Marshburn, who along with Chris Cassidy is preparing for the contingency EVA. “Ammonia leak on the outside of station means that Cassidy and I will be doing a spacewalk tomorrow to try and repair it.”
Mission Control teams worked overnight to understand and sort through the problem and find potential fixes or work-arounds for the electricity systems. The Mission Management team met this morning to identify any issues or latent hazards of the spacewalk, and they are seeking input from all the international partners. The crew is expecting a final go or no go by later today on whether the spacewalk will take place. There will be an update on NASA TV at 20:00 UTC, 4 pm EDT.
“The whole team is ticking like clockwork, readying for tomorrow. I am so proud to be Commander of this crew. Such great, capable, fun people,” said ISS Commander Chris Hadfield via Twitter. Yesterday, he called the leak “serious” but that the situation was stable.
NASA has said that while the coolant is vital to the operation of the ISS for the electricity-supplying systems, the crew is not in any danger. The ammonia cools the 2B power channel, one of eight power channels that control the all the various power-using systems at the ISS. All the systems that use power from the 2B channel, the problem area, are being transferred throughout the day to another channel. The 2B channel will eventually shut down when the coolant is depleted, and the power is being diverted in order to keep everything up and running on the station.
Cassidy and Marshburn are now preparing for the spacewalk in the Quest airlock, arranging their spacesuits and gathering the specialized tools they will need to do the work outside the station. These two are the perfect people to conduct this spacewalk, as both are veterans of three spacewalks, two of which they performed together on the STS-127 space shuttle mission to the ISS, and they went to this exact same area on the P6 truss to replace batteries. They have also trained for this particular spacewalk already, as this spacewalk task does fall under the “Big 12” of contingency spacewalks of possible serious issues that may occur. All astronauts train for these in case an unexpected event requires a quick response.
While Cassidy and Marshburn prepare in space, Astronauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center are using the Neutral Buoyancy lab – a 12- meter (40 ft.) deep swimming pool with mockups of the space station that simulates the zero-gravity conditions in space – going through the entire expected EVA. ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoferretti and NASA’s Terry Virts are walking through and choreographing the procedures to make sure the tasks could be done in a reasonable time as well as looking for potential hazards. They will confer with the ISS astronauts to share their experiences.
This video shows information about the potential spacewalk, as well as footage of the ammonia leak captured by the crew.
While NASA does not know for certain the exact location of the leak, they are focusing on the pump and flow control system, the suspected source. That exact same area and system was the location of a minor leak, first identified in 2007 – thought to have been caused perhaps by a micrometeorite impact — and in November 2012 two astronauts went on a spacewalk to fix the problem. They rewired some coolant lines and installed a spare radiator, and it appeared the problem had been fixed.
That first leak was not visible during the EVA, but this new leak is quite noticeable, as the crew wwas able to see the leak from inside the station.
One of the driving factors for getting the spacewalk underway as quickly as possible is that the location of the leak and the potential fix are not exactly known. The hope is that it is still leaking by the time they get out there on Saturday morning, so that they can easily identify the source of the leak. The first task will be identifying the source, then possibly replacing the current pump and flow control system with one of the spares, located handily out at the P6 truss. If that is not the source of the leak, they will look through the area to try and identify the source. NASA said the leak could potentially be located in the internal plumbing of the system, which would be harder to see immediately.
At the briefing, NASA officials said the spacewalk and ammonia leak won’t affect the scheduled departure of Hadfield, Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, set for Monday May 13 at 7:08 p.m. EDT. Three crew members, Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Misurkin and Pavel Vinogradov, will remain on the space station.
@Beyond_Beneath Geoff Sims Plutonic Gold Mine, Australia
A spectacular annular eclipse of the Sun was witnessed across Australia and the southern Pacific region early today. Morning dawned mostly clear across the Australian continent, and those who journeyed out to meet the antumbra of the Moon as the Sun rose across the Great Sandy Desert and the Cape York Peninsula were not disappointed. The rest of us watched worldwide on as Slooh and a scattering of other ad-hoc broadcasts delivered the celestial event to us via the web.
This was a challenging one. Although partial phases of the eclipse was visible across the entirety of Australia, Hawaii, and as far north as the Philippines and as far south as New Zealand, the track of annularity passed over some very remote locales. Stable Internet connections were scarce, and many photos and videos are still trickling in as die-hard eclipse chasers return “from the Bush.”
One lucky witness to the eclipse was Druce Horton (Xylopia on flickr) who caught the eclipse from Kuranda, Australia just north of Cairns. “It was completely clouded over here in Kuranda and I didn’t even bother going to a place where I could get a clear view.” Druce told Universe Today. “I then noticed the sky lightening a little and I rushed out with the camera and desperately tried to set an appropriate exposure and frame it while avoiding getting an eyeful of sunlight and/or a tree branch in the way.”
A rising crescent eclipse as seen by Druce Horton near Kurunda, Australia. (Credit and Copyright: Druce Horton. Used with Permission).
As pointed out the us by Michael Zeiler (@EclipseMaps) earlier this week, the town of Newman and surrounding regions in Western Australia were a great place to witness the rising annular eclipse. Geoffrey Sims ventured out and did just that:
Note how the atmospheric haze is distorting the solar annulus into a flattened ring… pure magic! Mr. Sims got some truly stunning pictures of the eclipse, and was one of the first to manage to get them out onto the Internet, though he stated on Twitter that it “will likely take weeks to sort through the images!”
All get reasons to keep a close eye on Mr. Sims’ Facebook page…
Mr. Joerg Schoppmeyer also ventured about 70 kilometres south of Newman to catch the rising “Ring of Fire”:
Annularity just moments after internal contact of the antumbra. Credit: Joerg Schoppmeyer).
We also mentioned earlier this week how you can use the “strainer effect” to create a flock of crescent Suns during a partial solar eclipse.
Amanda Bauer (@astropixie) of Sydney, Australia did just this to create her name in “eclipse pacmans”:
And speaking of which, eclipse crescents can turn up in the most bizarre of places, such as a lens flare caught by a webcam based at the Canberra Deep Space Network:
Trevor Sellman (@tsellman) based in northern Melbourne preferred to catch sight of the partial phase of the eclipse “the old fashioned way,” via a simple pinhole projection onto a white sheet of paper:
In addition to Slooh, the Mead West Vaco Observatory in conjunction with the Columbus State University’s Coca-Cola Space Science Center provided an excellent webcast of the full phases of the eclipse, and in multiple wavelengths to boot:
The solar annulus as seen near mid-eclipse in hydrogen alpha. (Credit: the CCSSC).
And they also provided a view in Calcium-K:
A screen capture of the final stage of the eclipse as seen in Cal-K. (Credit: the CCSSC).
But Earth bound-observers weren’t the only ones on hand to witness this eclipse. Roskosmos also released a video animation of the antumba of the Moon crossing the Earth as seen from the Elektro-L satellite:
“These images interest Russian space enthusiasts because we asked Roskosmos to optimize (the) work of satellite for best pictures of eclipse,” Vitaliy Egorov told Universe Today.
There’s no word as of yet if the NASA/JAXA spacecraft Hinode or if ESA’s Proba-2 caught the eclipse, although they were positioned to take advantage of the opportunity.
There were also some active sunspot regions on the Earthward face of the Sun, as captured by Monty Leventhal in this outstanding white-light filtered image:
Another fine video animation of the eclipse turned up courtesy of Steve Swayne of Maleny in Queensland, Australia;
And finally, Vanessa Hill caught the partial stage of the eclipse while observing from the CSIRO Astrophysics & Space Sciences viewing event:
Partial stages of the eclipse were also captured by Carey Johnson (@TheTelescopeGuy) from Hawaii and can be viewed on his flickr page.
If this eclipse left you jonesin’ for more, there’s a hybrid solar eclipse across the Atlantic and central Africa on November 3rd 2013. Maximum totality for this eclipse is 1 minute and 40 seconds. Unfortunately, after two solar eclipses in 6 months, another total solar eclipse doesn’t grace the Australian continent until July 22nd, 2028!
But such are the ways of the cosmos and celestial mechanics… hey, be glad we occupy a position in space and time where solar eclipses can occur.
Thanks to all who sent in photos… if you’ve got a picture of today’s eclipse, an anecdote, or just a tale of triumph and/or eclipse chasing tribulations drop us a line & share those pics up to the Universe Today flickr group. See you next syzygy, and may all your eclipse paths be clear!
Yikes! The trailer for an upcoming film “Gravity” is absolutely terrifying. This movie won’t hit theaters until October 4, 2013, so we can expect to see more trailers after this first ‘teaser.” We do know it is directed by Alfonso Cuarón and stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. But with an emergency spacewalk likely taking place tomorrow at the International Space Station, the timing of the release of this trailer is just a bit eerie.
Bullock plays a medical engineer on her first shuttle mission, with veteran astronaut Matt Kowalsky (Clooney) in command of his last flight before retiring. But on a seemingly routine spacewalk, disaster strikes. The shuttle is destroyed, the space station is damaged, leaving the two astronauts completely alone and tethered to nothing but each other and spiraling out into the blackness.
Watch the teaser below:
The word on the street is that NASA was not consulted at all for this film, so we can only hope for a hint of reality (i.e., let hope it’s not another “Armageddon.”) But from the trailer, it seems to follow the recipe for any space disaster film: go into space, have the mission go awry, bring in the heroes to save the day. Guesses on thumbs up or down?
Artist Impression of debris around a white dwarf star. Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, and G. Bacon (STScI)
For those of us who practice amateur astronomy, we’re very familiar with the 150 light-year distant Hyades star cluster – one of the jewels in the Taurus crown. We’ve looked at it countless times, but now the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken its turn observing and spotted something astronomers weren’t expecting – the debris of Earth-like planets orbiting white dwarf stars. Are these “burn outs” being polluted by detritus similar to asteroids? According to researchers, this new observation could mean that rocky planet creation is commonplace in star clusters.
“We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets,” said Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge in England. He is lead author of a new study appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “When these stars were born, they built planets, and there’s a good chance they currently retain some of them. The material we are seeing is evidence of this. The debris is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our solar system.”
So what makes this an uncommon occurrence? Research tells us that all stars are formed in clusters, and we know that planets form around stars. However, the equation doesn’t go hand in hand. Out of the hundreds of known exoplanets, only four are known to have homes in star clusters. As a matter of fact, that number is a meager half percent, but why? As a rule, the stars contained within a cluster are young and active. They are busy producing stellar flares and similar brilliant activity which may mask signs of emerging planets. This new research is looking to the “older” members of the cluster stars – the grandparents which may be babysitting.
To locate possible candidates, astronomers have employed Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and focused on two white dwarf stars. Their return showed evidence of silicon and just slight levels of carbon in their atmospheres. This observation was important because silicon is key in rocky materials – a prime ingredient on Earth’s list and other similar solid planets. This silicon signature may have come from the disintegration of asteroids as they wandered too close to the stars and were torn apart. A lack of carbon is equally exciting because, while it helps shape the properties and origins of planetary debris, it becomes scarce when rocky planets are formed. This material may have formed a torus around the defunct stars which then drew the matter towards them.
“We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets,” said Farihi. “When these stars were born, they built planets, and there’s a good chance they currently retain some of them. The material we are seeing is evidence of this. The debris is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our solar system.”
Ring around the rosie? You bet. This leftover material swirling around the white dwarf stars could mean that planet formation happened almost simultaneously as the stars were born. At their collapse, the surviving gas giants may have had the gravitational “push” to relocate asteroid-like bodies into “star-grazing orbits”.
This image shows the region around the Hyades star cluster, the nearest open cluster to us. The Hyades cluster is very well-studied due to its location, but previous searches for planets have produced only one. A new study led by Jay Farihi of the University of Cambridge, UK, has now found the atmospheres of two burnt-out stars in this cluster — known as white dwarfs — to be “polluted” by rocky debris circling the star. Inset, the locations of these white dwarf stars are indicated — stars known as WD 0421+162, and WD 0431+126. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, and Z. Levay (STScI)
“We have identified chemical evidence for the building blocks of rocky planets,” explains Farihi. “When these stars were born, they built planets, and there’s a good chance that they currently retain some of them. The signs of rocky debris we are seeing are evidence of this — it is at least as rocky as the most primitive terrestrial bodies in our Solar System. The one thing the white dwarf pollution technique gives us that we won’t get with any other planet detection technique is the chemistry of solid planets. Based on the silicon-to-carbon ratio in our study, for example, we can actually say that this material is basically Earth-like.”
What of future plans? According to Farihi and the research team, by continuing to observe with methods like those employed by Hubble, they can take an even deeper look at the atmospheres around white dwarf stars. They will be searching for signs of solid planet “pollution” – exploring the white dwarf chemistry and analyzing stellar composition. Right now, the two “polluted” Hyades white dwarfs are just a small segment of more than a hundred future candidates which will be studied by a team led by Boris Gansicke of the University of Warwick in England. Team member Detlev Koester of the University of Kiel in Germany is also contributing by using sophisticated computer models of white dwarf atmospheres to determine the abundances of various elements that can be traced to planets in the Hubble spectrograph data.
“Normally, white dwarfs are like blank pieces of paper, containing only the light elements hydrogen and helium,” Farihi said. “Heavy elements like silicon and carbon sink to the core. The one thing the white dwarf pollution technique gives us that we just won’t get with any other planet-detection technique is the chemistry of solid planets.”
The team also plans to look deeper into the stellar composition as well. “The beauty of this technique is that whatever the Universe is doing, we’ll be able to measure it,” Farihi said. “We have been using the Solar System as a kind of map, but we don’t know what the rest of the Universe does. Hopefully with Hubble and its powerful ultraviolet-light spectrograph COS, and with the upcoming ground-based 30- and 40-metre telescopes, we’ll be able to tell more of the story.”
Astronauts on the International Space Station spotted small white flakes floating away from an area of the International Space Station’s P6 truss structure today (Thursday, May 9) and determined an ammonia-based coolant was leaking from the solar array system. While the coolant is vital to the operation of the ISS, NASA says at this point, the crew is not in any danger.
“It is a serious situation,” ISS Commander Chris Hadfield tweeted today, “but between crew and experts on the ground, it appears to have been stabilized. Tomorrow we find out for certain.”
The ammonia is used to cool electronics associated with solar arrays which provide electricity to station systems. NASA said the crew used handheld cameras and Mission Control used external television cameras to gain additional imagery in an attempt to narrow down the leak’s location.
The crew reports, along with imagery and data received by flight controllers in Mission Control in Houston, confirmed that the rate of the ammonia leaking from this section of the cooling system has increased.
Each solar array has its own independent cooling loop. There was a minor leak in the same area that was first identified in 2007 – thought to have been caused perhaps by a micrometeorite impact — and in November 2012 two astronauts went on a spacewalk to fix the problem. They rewired some coolant lines and installed a spare radiator, and it appeared the problem had been fixed.
NASA does not yet know whether this increased ammonia flow is from the same leak, which at the time of the spacewalk, was not visible. The early analysis by thermal control systems specialists indicates that the leak rate could result in a shutdown of this one cooling loop in about 48 hours.
Plans are being developed to reroute other power channels to maintain full operation of those and other systems normally controlled by the solar array that is cooled by this loop.
Current ISS Capcom in Mission Control Doug Wheelock radioed to the crew that “Tomorrow we’ll plan to get the (robotic) arm in the game to see if we can better pinpoint the location of the leak.”
Three of the crewmembers, Chris Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko are scheduled to depart the station on Monday, May 13. Hadfield asked Wheelock is this leak might impact their undocking, but Wheelock said that they are still “getting their arms fully around the issue,” and would have more information for the crew by tomorrow morning.
