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Minor ammonia leakage BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: January 31, 2007 On guard against potentially toxic ammonia spills, spacewalkers Mike Lopez-Alegria and Sunita Williams successfully hooked up a critical coolant loop today. The astronauts then locked down a no-longer-needed radiator and salvaged one of two flexible coolant lines from an equally unneeded emergency ammonia reservoir that will be dumped overboard this summer. While a few frozen specks of ammonia apparently leaked out of a fitting on the reservoir near the end of the spacewalk, they did not appear to hit either astronaut. Leakage was a concern throughout the spacewalk because any ammonia ice crystals carried back into the station's airlock could vaporize and get into the lab's air supply. "I think we saw some ammonia coming out of M9, Sunni saw it," Lopez-Alegria reported. "It looked like, what would you say, four or five..." "Four or five little specks, probably about a millimeter long, of white specks coming out," Williams said. "LA was on the side, so it wasn't as if he was in front of it, so it didn't look like it went anywhere near him." Flight controllers were not especially concerned, but the astronauts were asked to spend extra time in their spacesuits after re-entering the station's Quest airlock module to make sure any residual ammonia was warmed enough to "bake out" before re-entering the station. "When we get back into the crew lock, we're going to spend some time doing a bakeout," Chris Looper radioed from mission control. "Because of that ammonia, we're in the 'suspected contamination' branch of the (spacewalk congtingency plan)." "From my perspective, Chris, I don't know that we suspect contamination," Lopez-Alegria said. "We don't think we have contamination, but that's probably for the lawyers." "Yeah, we understand that, Mike. We've been having those same discussions here (but) we're going to follow the path of safety." Williams then inspected Lopez-Alegria's suit and reported no obvious signs of contamination. Struggling at times in tight quarters, it took the astronauts longer than planned to complete the earlier coolant system work and several "get-ahead" tasks were put on hold. Another spacewalk is on tap Sunday to hook up a second coolant loop and at least some of the deferred get-aheads may be added to that timeline if possible. |
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NASA's New Horizons space probe will fly past Jupiter in late February, using the giant planet's gravity as a sling-shot to bend the craft's trajectory and accelerate toward Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Mission officials describe the science to be collected during the Jupiter encounter during this briefing.
The 24th Russian Progress resupply ship sent to the International Space Station successfully makes the final approach and docking to the Pirs module of the outpost while running on automated controls.
Barbara Morgan, the former Idaho school teacher who served as Christa McAuliffe's backup for the Teacher in Space program, sits down for this NASA interview. As NASA's first Educator Astronaut, Morgan will be a mission specialist and robot arm operator during shuttle Endeavour's STS-118 flight to the space station, targeted for launch in June.
On October 3, 1962, Wally Schirra became the fifth American to rocket into space. This NASA film entitled "The Flight of Sigma 7" explains the 9-hour voyage that gained important knowledge in the Mercury program.