ACEIZE Tracking the current state of Science and Technology

On August 16th, Tracy Dyson and Douglas Wheelock successfully installed a new cooling pump on the International Space Station. The installation took two weeks and three spacewalks to complete. The repair was initially scheduled to take two spacewalks, but the old cooling pump released some ammonia after being unstuck from the station. This hazardous ammonia release was concern for caution during the installation.

There are two cooling pumps on the Space Station. If the second pump had failed before the repair was completed, the space station would have been abandoned because the station would not have been safe for the astronauts. When the first cooling pump stopped functioning, many of the experiments and machinery on board needed to be shut down.