NASA announced Sunday that it will be delaying resupply missions by at least one day to prioritize the restoration of the coolant system of the International Space Station (ISS). To date, half of the coolant system is still down and under probe.
The Orbital Sciences Corp.also announced Saturday that it is rescheduling a resupply launch from the Wallops Flight Facility located in the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The new schedule will be on Thursday at approximately 9:19 p.m EST. It will be the first commercial resupply mission to the ISS by the company.
The original launch date of the resupply mission was set on Tuesday but NASA did not authorize it and advised them to reschedule due to the coolant system glitch in the space station. The update was given to the company Monday after the manager's meeting.
Orbital Sciences launch vehicle dubbed as Antares will be carrying a total weight of 2,780 lbs (1,261 kgs.) with most of it for crew supplies and science and research equipment. It is the first of the eight resupply missions under the $1.9 billion contract with NASA.
Meanwhile, there was no further update on Saturday about the plans of restoring the function of an ammonia pump module's balky flow control valve found at the starboard side of the station.
The above-mentioned valve failed to work on Wednesday. This has caused one of the outpost's two coolant loops to become too cold and eventually shut down.
If the teams on the ground will not be able to find a way to fix the glitch in the near future, spacewalks will likely be installed as a replacement to the pump module and a restoration of the coolant system's redundancy.
The good news is that the six-man crew is safe. However, some irrelevant systems have been shut down to avoid overheating that will definitely limit the conduct of science research.
