CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Two spacewalking astronauts worked on a leaky radiator system outside the International Space Station yesterday, just hours after barely dodging a menacing piece of orbiting junk.
Station commander Sunita Williams and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide were aiming to isolate the suspect radiator to see if it’s the source of an ammonia-coolant leak, and deploy a spare radiator to bypass the troublesome section.
Engineers theorize that bits of space junk may have penetrated the radiator or part of its system or the radiator just cracked.
In an interview earlier this week, Williams said the biggest risk is the uncertainty surrounding the leak.
“We have a lot of extra procedures just in case things don’t go exactly as planned,” she said. “But we’ve dealt with ammonia before.”