2 p.m. UPDATE CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — It’s a wrap for NASA’s Christmas Eve spacewalk.
Two astronauts are safely back inside the International Space Station after replacing a pump in a crippled cooling line on Tuesday. Preliminary testing shows the new pump to be working well. NASA expects to have the station’s cooling system restored by this weekend, with all equipment running again.
Astronauts Rick Mastracchio (muh-STRACK-ee-oh) and Michael Hopkins braved a mini-blizzard of noxious ammonia as they hooked up the new pump. But in the end, they triumphed in their second spacewalk in four days.
It was only the second Christmas Eve spacewalk ever. Mission Control says it’s the best Christmas ever
Expedition 38 Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins are conducting the second in a series of spacewalks to replace a degraded ammonia pump module on the International Space Station’s starboard truss. The spacewalk officially began at 6:53 a.m. EST and is scheduled to run about 6 hours and 30 minutes.