The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has to decide whether to go for the launch of Orbital Sciences Corp.’s unmanned spacecraft Cygnus for the resupply mission or to continue with the series of spacewalks scheduled to repair a cooling loop’s pump. The said cooling loop malfunctioned due to extremely low temperature.
Commands from the ground controllers of NASA are sent to another valve which is also a part of the cooling system. The engineers working on the task hopes that this valve could shift its position to help maintain the desired temperature in the loop. If this pushes through, reintegrating affected parts of the station’s electronics will be possible.
NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkin has already started checking their tools for spacewalk, including trying on spacesuits and making sure that they remember the procedures while inside the Quest airlock. Mastracchio and Hopkins were assisted by Koichi Wakata, a Japanese astronaut and Commander Oleg Kotov.
Kotov along with Flight Engineer Sergey Ryazanskiy are also scheduled to do a spacewalk on December 27. The pair is tasked to install a foot restraint, medium and high resolution cameras, and a jettison gear. Kotov and Ryazanskiy will also be bringing a payload boom to be installed on the Zvevda service module. Fellow cosmonaut and flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin served as the maintenance supervisor on the Russian side of the ISS. He has performed plumbing work, updated the station’s inventory system, and facilitated the transfer of data to a laptop computer.
On the other hand, momentum continues to build up for the launch of the Cygnus spacecraft on Thursday, December 19, 19:19 pm EST from the Wallops Flight Facility in the Eastern shore of Virginia. The cargo craft is already equipped with its manifested gear which it will use upon arrival at the International Space Station on Sunday.
