ISS crew ready for spacewalk after 'serious' ammonia leak

It appears that there is a major leak of ammonia requiring repair and they can see a steady stream of bits of ammonia flakes floating off into space. Apparently it is leaking 5 lbs of ammonia per day when it normally leaks this amount per year.

Article

NASA said the leak of ammonia, which is used to cool the station's power system, was coming from the same general area as in a previous episode in November last year. A meteorite or a piece of orbital debris is suspected to have hit the cooling radiator and caused the problem, which Suffredini described as an "annoyance because of all the work we have to do to work around the problem." Read more at: phys.org...

For those in the know, how serious is this situation and what would happen if it is not repaired? It is confined to the US segment of the space station.

reply to post by whatnext21
Is this the same leak that was reported this morning? I read that there was a radiation leak that they were going to have to do an emergency space walk to repair earlier today.

If it is, I didn't see it when I searched space, mods please remove if this is a double post. sorry

This is an ammonia leak, not radiation, did you mean ammonia? The article says 8 hours ago.


This repair is to take place tomorrow

reply to post by whatnext21
I read it on Google News this morning. I just checked it out and they changed it from radiation leak to ammonia from cooling system leak since this morning. I don't know if it's been posted on ATS earlier today or not.