The astronauts replaced the coolant pump on the ISS - BBC Russian

astronauts spent in space five and a half hours

Two U.S. astronauts went out into space, to replace a broken pump and stop the leakage of ammonia on the International Space Station.

Meshbern Tom and Chris Cassidy had left out five and a half hours, and completed work on an hour earlier than planned.

Press Problem was discovered on Thursday : the crew overboard noticed small white flakes drifting from the reference segment P6 which controls NASA.

job Meshberna and Cassidy, according to representatives of NASA, was unique because they had to prepare for a spacewalk in a very short period of time.

now on board the International Space Station is six people.

Tom Meshbern leaves ISS early next week, along with Canadian Chris Hadfield and Russia’s Roman Romanenko.

“No more leaks, We wind up Tom and Chris back inside,” – wrote on the microblogging site Twitter Hadfield shortly before the completion of the emergency exit colleagues in open space.

Ammonia is toxic even in small concentrations, is used for power station cooling channels, providing it with electricity.

Previous

ammonia leak occurred at the ISS in November last year.

Then

ammonia flowed from the cooling system electrical equipment for which the current flows from one of the eight large solar station.

liquidate it during an unplanned spacewalk was all the two astronauts – Sanite Williams and Akihiko Hoside.

Despite the fact that such leaks do not usually affect the safety of the crew, they can affect the results of scientific experiments.