Outdoor use on the ISS - tagesschau.de

outdoor use on the ISS

At Christmas, a new cooling pump

It was the second outdoor use on Christmas Eve in the history of NASA: Two U.S. astronauts left the ISS for about seven hours. You stöpselten by several lines for a new cooling pump. This will now be ramped up step by step.

By Silke Hasselmann, MDR radio studio in Washington

class=”text 14 years ago, it was done for the first and only time, until just now: Two astronauts went on 24 December in the hostile environment of space. At that time it was to fix the broken Hubble telescope. Now the second outdoor use took place on a Christmas Eve: in the ISS orbit 400 kilometers above the earth

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More than seven hours outside the ISS

Shortly before 13 clock CET had left the protective space station, the two Americans Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins. It was not until more than seven hours later, they returned to their Japanese counterparts Koichi Wakata, who was in charge on board, especially for remote control of the 17.3-meter-long robotic arm.

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small leak occurs

But when Mastracchio and Hopkins were after about four and a half hours while the third switch like plug of four coolant lines, she snagged. When detangling There was a small leak. Because at the same time the transmission of video signals between ISS and the NASA control center in Houston had failed, the experts had to make do with the descriptions of the two space walkers on the ground for a while.

The turn first reported about their impression that a part of the flocculated chemical zukomme on them and that their spacesuits could have gotten something from it.

The exploration and conquest of space – an ancient dream of humanity. In the 13th Century, China had first experiments with missiles, which were powered by black powder. But it was only at the beginning of the 20th Century made the rocket research tremendous progress. As is so often played in the development of military and political aspects makes a decisive role. (Photo: picture-alliance / dpa)

detoxification measures against ammonia

Because ammonia can be deduced from the space station, were introduced later for security detoxification measures – according to NASA, a standard procedure before the re-entry of the astronauts in the ISS. They had previously but all ammonia lines and then five power cable is successfully connected to the pump. This complicated and quite dangerous operation had become necessary because on 11 December one of the two ISS cooling systems had failed.

In the next few hours, the repaired system is powered up gradually. The ISS mission 38 can proud and meanwhile significantly quieter than under the previous circumstances eat the battered Christmas roast.

Stand: 12.25.2013 02:02 clock

More on this topic:

• ISS astronauts start spacewalk difficult, 12.24.2013
• The man in space | pictures
• ISS crew manage to repair space station, S. Hasselmann, MDR Washington | audio
• World Atlas | USA