NEW YORK, December 22. (ARMS-TASS). American astronauts Richard Mastracchio and Michael Hopkins completed early Dec. 21 spacewalk, attempted to troubleshoot the cooling system of the International Space Station (ISS). This was stated by the official representative of NASA.
He said that the operation was extremely successful, astronauts acted well ahead of schedule and completed a number of works that have been scheduled for Monday, December 23. They, in particular, to disable and remove the defective pump in one of the two circuits of the cooling system of the American segment of the ISS, as well as to clean it on the outside loading platform. On Monday, the astronauts are expected to establish a new pump.
Spacewalk began at about 7:00 on the East Coast of the USA (16:00 MSK) and ended at 12:29 (21:29 MSK). Thus, it lasted only about 5 hours 29 minutes. It was originally planned that the astronauts will be in the open space of 6.5 hours. NASA is also considering the possibility to increase the operation time up to 7 hours, but it never happened.Mastracchio to today operations conducted in the open space of 38.5 hours to Hopkins became the first active output. There were three planned spacewalks. Follow on 23 and 25 December.
Earlier, representatives of NASA reported that the helmets of astronauts at the time of these outputs will be equipped with plastic breathing tubes and absorbent pads in case of new water leaks in their spacesuits. In July this year, the Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano almost choked with water, which began to come into his helmet from the cooling system of the suit.
Timeline: Abnormal situation on the ISS astronauts exit into outer space
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