got a very difficult situation. these astronauts have been working diligently for more than five hours. we ve been monitoring this feed and we ve heard mention of some ammonia flakes potentially touching some of the space suits. the significance of that however, we don t noech. as you just heard it seems like they are continuing the process of attaching this spare pump to the international space station. and the hope in all of this has been they ll be able to successfully do that just in time for christmas. a few minutes ahead of schedule, nasa started another space walk to support the orbiting international space stationings. rick mass track yoeg retrieving failure of an internal flow control valve. two american astronauts are venturing out. their mission to replace a pump needed to cool the vessel. i don t know if you guys believe in miracles but i got the pin on first try. oh, that s awesome, rick.
ammonia flakes floating out as they were attaching the fluid lines and that would decontaminate space suits for the next one on the agenda. i guess later tonight we will know for sure whether the cooling system actually has been repaired. yeah. that will basically justify the preliminary approval of the bump test. the pressurization will happen around 9:00 eastern time tonight. both are back up and running in unison. the science research that has been on hold for the past two weeks and finally resumes. this christmas eve space walk did have its befestive moment. best christmas ever. thanks, guys. juthat was fantastic work. merry christmas to everybody.
this time two astronauts in the international space station have been hard at work trying to repair that faulty cooling system. okay, guys. working together. we re working on the t-tech removal from the m-1, m-2 line. that should be the single t-tech. well, the work began early this morning just before 7:00 a.m. eastern. flight engineers had already made a lot of headway when there was this brief glitch in the plan, apparently. some ammonia flakes landed on their suits when they had to untangle a fluid line. now they ll have to air them out before actually going back into the station. it s a pretty dangerous mission, and no doubt there s a lot more work to be done. those space walkers aren t scheduled to finish until next tuesday, by the way. joining me from houston, former nasa astronaut leroy chow. were they ever in danger? i saw reports where nasa said,
that pump contains ammonia making their job even more delicate. about an hour ago we learned they did have some issues when one of the fluid lines carrying the ammonia in the cooling system became tangled. and that line has since been released. so some good news there, but the astronauts did report sighing some ammonia flakes which did get on their space suits. a nasa spokesperson tells cnn there is no real concern, however. the astronauts will have to undergo a decontamination process anyway before heading back inside the space station. that should take care of ta residue. and certainly, alina, we know about the importance of things staying cool when you re around electronics. we deal with that in television because we re around so many things that are electronic. often we complain about how cold our working environment is. much bigger deal obviously if you are in space. so this is really sidelined a lot of business of the space station. what will they be doing once things get back
no, they weren t. however, we re talking about a space suit that was filling up with water, right? now there s safeguards of a snorkel inside those space suits. right. well, the space walkers were never in any danger in today s space walk. of course, the previous space walk where the helmet was filling up with water, that was a dangerous situation. nasa came up with some work around, contingency plans in case that would happen again today. they had a bit of a stuck connector, trying to get that off of this temporary mounting place. as you could see, they were able to work with the problem with mission control center and got everything done. okay. give me a little layman s terms. i love space. i know a good amount, but kind of explain the technical part that you were just saying in addition to these ammonia flakes and why they have to go through