Space Station Suffers Cooling System Malfunction

Space Station Suffers Cooling System Malfunction

The International Space Station suffered a cooling system malfunction late Saturday that forced its astronaut crew to power down some vital systems while engineers on Earth study the problem.

A power spike led to the shutdown of a pump module in one of two liquid ammonia cooling loops on the space station, setting off alarms that awoke the six astronauts living aboard the orbiting lab, NASA officials said in a statement. The malfunction occurred Saturday at about 8 p.m. EDT (0000 Sunday GMT) while the crew was sleeping.

Source : www.space.com...

Probably nothing... compared to MIR space station's malfunctions history!


Edited by Gagol to make link work.

[edit on 1-8-2010 by gagol]

This is contrary to how I have always perceived Space; I never thought that cooling would be something of a problem up there! You wouldn't even feel warmth from the Sun in Space would you?

I am very Spaced on this subject I guess; maybe the coolant is to dip something deeper than Space temps. What is the temp in Space? Must be for equipment that cannot function within the heat the humanoids need (sorry didn't read the article yet). I would think that we could harness Space more naturally; "Hey! Can someone open a window here"

LOL sorry, bad humor. I will go try to read now.

On earth the atmosphere act as a giant heat sink, effectively dissipating heat from equipment. In space, my understanding is that they need to transform heat into some kind of RF radiation and beam it out in order to avoid build-up of heat, thus cooking equipment and crew.

I am no engineer though, maybe someone more technical than me can explain it to us in a more concise way.

In the meantime we can learn more about ISS cooling here : science.nasa.gov...


Edited by Gagol to add link

[edit on 1-8-2010 by gagol]

In deep space it gets cold sure.

But here around Earth, so close to a star, it's going to get really hot up there.

Consider the surface temperatures of the bright side of the moon.

Mean surface temperature (day) 107°C

www.solarviews.com...

107 C is
224.6 F

reply to post by gagol


I believe they wouldn't need air conditioning if they had one to five pounds of reflective foil they could cover the surface of the space station with.

reply to post by Greensage

The problem is not heat or cold from outside. The space station is well insulated and remember that it spends about 45 minutes in sunlight and 45 minutes in darkness.

The real problem is getting rid of the heat generated inside the station.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Greensage

 

The problem is not heat or cold from outside. The space station is well insulated and remember that it spends about 45 minutes in sunlight and 45 minutes in darkness.

The real problem is getting rid of the heat generated inside the station.

Ahhh your right.

I bet that equipment gets real hot.

Imagine living surrounded by nothing but machines and computers.

Now that would suck. Their job balances out I guess. Get to go to space but trapped in a hotbox the whole time.

You were quick to figure that out, good work, I feel bad I missed it especially since the article states clearly that they powered down multiple systems as a result of the incident. Which would result in help keep the station somewhat cooler than if they left them running.

I am confident they can fix it in time before escape is forced. And in the event it is, they do have an escape module do they not?? I am almost certain they have one on hand right now.

It seems silly to drag all that gas and equipment up there only to do what Space does so naturally.

I found out that Space is roughly -270 Celsius or -455 Fahrenheit. Now why wouldn't that be a more efficient means of cooling? Just tap right in there and all molecules stop moving! LOL Well, you don't have to turn it up on 'High' LOL

I found a neat article that talks about managing the temperatures on the ISS. It's a good read for anyone who wants to learn more about it.

Staying Cool on the ISS