mastracchio as he prepares to fix a faulty pump on the international space station. so, what is this is christmas eve mission in space like? we wanted to know from someone who knows firsthand. we are joining by colonel ron guerin, a former astronaut with four space walks under his belt. it s so good to have you here. you actually handled that pump module that the torontos woastr worked on today. what are they doing here? they re switching out this pump which is responsible for a lot of the cooling thattings on the international space station. a lot of equipment both inside and outside the station require cooling. the way we do that on the space station is through ammonia. that ammonia is on the outside of the space station. so we have two redundant systems. the system that failed is on the starboard side of the space station and you know, we have a flow control valve in there that failed. so we have to replace the whole pump module, about 800 pounds.
international spacestation. they did imagine to remove a damaged pump from the cooling system and could actually finish the complicated repair job during the next spacewalk on monday. we go live to the l.a. bureau and dominic they did most of the hard work today, right? yes, and it took about five and a half hours on the spacewalk. two american astronauts doing this. they #r are facing highly toxic ammonia. they managed to remove the bad pump module. they have since connected all of the fluid lines and the electrical power and then they had to take out the mount mounting bolts. here is the danger with this problem. they have a chilling system with ammonia in it. it has risked freezing the water in the cooling works inside the station s lab. they had to shut that down, but with one cooling system
think? cell phone crashing. that s like the greatest thing i have ever seen. this is the same guy from the people who would do dancing behind people at the mall. see them on escalators dancing, dancing, dancing and as soon as the person would turn around he would stop. this guy moved away from him. so he moves over next to him. followed him. it s awesome. so, maybe something to try out if you are bored with the family. and you wanted to get punched out at the airport. go ahead. there you go. other news stories making headlines at this hour. we have a live look now at the international space station. nasa astronauts stepping out in the void of space conducting a very risky emergency spacewalk. they are trying to fix a crippled cooling system. americans rick and michael hopkins working to replace a faulty pump module. hopkins using the same suit that filled with water nearly drowning an italian astronaut back in july, if you remember that astronauts have installed the snorkel
it s by no means a record, but certainly a challenge and a physical toll taken by the astronauts when they re out there. they also had to confront neighbors of highly toxic ammonia which was leaking from the repair site. so the astronauts managed to remove the bad pump module from the exterior. you can see it on the screen there. they had to disconnect all the fluid lines, take out electrical power talks remove the mounting bolts, and then they unhinged that pump out of the cooling system. it wasn t exactly a scene from gravity or apollo 13 , but the danger was chilling the ammonia too much, it risked freezing the water cooling system inside the labs. so they had to shut that down of the the real problem there being that with one cooling system down, there is a secondary one busted, they would have been in a critical situation where they would have had to shut down most of the space station. tricky work to be done.
the pump station s structural truss. they had to disconnect all the fluid lines. they got that pump out of its receptacle and out of the cooling system and parked it in a temporary parking spot. they ll go back monday and retrieve the spare cooling pump that will be removed, put on the robot arm and put into place and reconnected. if they get through all of that on monday, they won t have to go outside on christmas day. that s sort of a christmas gift if they have to do a third one. let s talk about the critical nature of this. if they do not repair this, what kind of hazards will this cause for the international space station? with regards to its cooling system? yeah, there are two cooling systems. when they re both running, you can power up all three laboratories, the u.s., the japanese, the european research labs, and run all their experiments. when you lose a pump module like this, it was chilling the