Two astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are currently going for an early Saturday morning stroll high above the Earth in an effort to identify and fix the space station's ammonia leak discovered Thursday.
"Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy and Tom Marshburn began a spacewalk at 8:44 a.m. EDT Saturday to inspect and possibly replace a pump controller box on the International Space Station's far port truss (P6) suspected of leaking ammonia coolant," NASA announced.
"Station managers and the international partners approved plans late Friday to conduct the spacewalk after a day-long review of procedures and the crew's preparations to support the excursion."
The spacewalk is expected to last 6 1/2 hours, and NASA says it will broadcast a post-spacewalk briefing through NASA TV "no earlier than 4:30 EDT."
The ammonia leak has been described as a both a serious hazard and a rather harmless annoyance by different space officials. The American spacewalkers will be focusing on repairs to far port truss (P6), the oldest space station backbone component, launched back in 2000.
Ammonia leaks have troubled the ISS before.
"This ammonia loop is the same one that spacewalkers attempted to troubleshoot a leak on during a spacewalk on Nov. 1, 2012," NASA said in a statement Thursday. "It is not yet known whether this increased ammonia flow is from the same leak, which at the time, was not visible.
There are currently six astronauts onboard the ISS. Three hail from Russia and two from the United States, all led by Commander Canadian Chris Hadfield.
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