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ISS News

Significant Ammonia Leak on ISS (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 10, 2013
Filed under

ISS Crew Preparing for Possible Spacewalk Saturday to Fix Ammonia Leak
“Following Thursday’s identification of an ammonia coolant leak outside the International Space Station, the Expedition 35 crew Friday began preparing for a possible spacewalk Saturday. Mission managers are discussing the information that was gathered overnight about the leak on the far left-side of the station’s truss structure, called the P6 with P standing for port. A final decision on whether to go forward with a spacewalk is not expected until late tonight.”
NASA Sets TV Briefing Today to Discuss Space Station Status
“NASA managers will discuss the status of the International Space Station, including the latest on an external cooling loop leak that developed Thursday, during a televised briefing today at 3 p.m. CDT (4 p.m. EDT).”
International Space Station Ammonia Leak Briefing (video)

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

15 responses to “Significant Ammonia Leak on ISS (Update)”

  1. Jim Oberg says:
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    Here’s an article I wrote for ‘Spectrum’ almost three years ago explaining the new mode of space station repair EVAs — like we just may see again in the near future.
    http://spectrum.ieee.org/ae

  2. Stuart J. Gray says:
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    Why cant they use the arm to inspect the leak area?
    Isnt that one of the primary purposes of that hardware.
    Or better yet, let one of the sphere’s out the arilock and maneuver it around to look at it.

    • tankmodeler says:
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      Given how much of a PITA an EVA is, I’d imagine that if they are not using the SSRMS, then it’s because it can’t reach or can’t see the leak area. Robotic EVA activities are almost always the first option explored.

      • Steve Pemberton says:
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        Dextre along with Canadarm 2 could be carried out to P6 on the mobile transporter so I doubt if reach is the issue. Most likely it’s the urgency of the situation which requires humans rather than robotics. Robotic operations are normally planned, choreographed, tested and trained long in advance of the actual activity. Of course routine spacewalks are also, but in the case of a hastily needed operation, which in this case involves not only a lot of visual inspection but also swapping out of a pump module, it’s a lot easier to say “Hey Chris and Tom, go outside and take a look at the area around the pump module and while you’re out there go ahead and swap it out” then to try and do all of this robotically on such short notice. I’m not minimizing the difficulty of EVA but Cassidy and Marshburn are quite capable of going out there and doing the job on extremely short notice whereas trying to do the same thing robotically on such short notice would have much less if any chance of success.

        I think this situation illustrates the ongoing discussion about humans vs. robotics, and why in space exploration both are needed.

        • Steve Whitfield says:
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          Good post Steve. I suspect you’re right; they want to diagnose and repair in a single operation if at all possible, and as quickly as possible.

          Some of us have said all along that for just about any aspect of space development both humans and robots are needed to do things effectively.

        • Stuart J. Gray says:
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          I was only suggesting reconnaissance of the area prior to the spacewalk. They would have known what to expect before the astronauts even woke up this morning. And now that the spheres have been proven to work at ISS, they should build some that can venture outside.”Peform Optical survey of the P6 Truss” – I’m sure there’s an app for that 😉

          • Steve Pemberton says:
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            Interesting idea using Spheres. My first thought was that it might be considered too risky to have a free flyer moving around autonomously outside of the station in very close proximity. But if the maximum possible thrust was very low, and the mass of Spheres was low, then even if one went out of control and hit the station there would be little if any damage.

            It would need to be sent out of the JAXA airlock because all of the other airlocks require a suited up astronaut to open the hatch.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Excellent idea Stuart. I’d forgotten about the SPHEREs. They’re supposed to be testing the concept, so this would have been a perfect opportunity to expand the “test site” by sending them outside (an S-EVA?). And a real-life event is probably a more meaningful test than a contrived test procedure. I think these little guys have a lot of potential and I’d like to see them evolve in sophistication over time.

            I wonder if they’d consider adding audio record and playback capability to them, with which we could finally experience the elusive Music of the Spheres (sorry, my fingers typed that while I wasn’t looking).

          • ASFalcon13 says:
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            SPHERES in their current form wouldn’t work outside the Destiny lab. Some of the aspects of their design that make them good testbeds on ISS prevent their use in vacuum. Among other issues, the system relies on a set of fixed ultrasound beacons set throughout the lab as a sort of “pseudo-GPS” for position and attitude knowledge. No atmosphere, no navigation.

            I guess you could redesign SPHERES to operate in vacuum, but why not instead revive the AERCam Sprint/Mini-AERCam line, which already has flight history in vacuum?

            As a side note, a free-flying inspector doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me, but I wonder if there are thruster plume impingement restrictions that would prevent their use around certain areas of the station.

          • korichneveygigant says:
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            I would assume that something that small would use gn2 jets instead of a “thruster” if that is the plume impingement you are referring to

          • ASFalcon13 says:
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            gN2 jets *are* a type of thruster, and are referred to as such (at least, they have been on every spacecraft with a gN2 system I’ve worked on), and that is what I’m talking about. They might not cause thermal issues, but they might still be able to ablate. Or they might not be a problem at all, which was why I was wondering – I wasn’t suggesting it was a foregone conclusion, just something to consider.

          • korichneveygigant says:
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            I know they are thrusters, but I was assuming (my bad) that you were talking about thermal issues caused by plume impingement

    • hikingmike says:
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      Reminds me of the “whiskers” on SeaQuest. Anyone? 🙂

  3. ProfSWhiplash says:
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    Okay, latest story to the drama is that, to play it safe, the astronauts simply removed & replaced the whole Pump Flow Control Subassembly (PFCS). The suspect unit was stowed outside where the replacement was kept..

    So some question then, starting with: just what are the dimensions of this thing? I’m just wondering on how will they restock that replacment (and what to do with the old one. Could they SAFELY (the thing handled ammonia, after all) move it first into the station (first maybe bag it?) and then immediately stick it inside the next Dragon for a return trip home for trouble-shooting? Or forgetting that plan (because of the whole ammonia risk), could a fresh replacement PFCS be brought up on the next resupply — maybe stowed in the Dragon’s unpressurized aft trunk? (then place the busted one in that trunk for later reentry disposal). Just curious

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      I don’t know if doing that with an ammonia system is allowable, but it sure is nice to have options once again. They’d never fit it in a Soyuz capsule, and even if they could I don’t think they’d want to pay Soyuz’s “sky-rocketing” prices to take up a new one or bring down the busted one.