NASA arranges a quick spacewalk to repair leaking space station

Two astronauts completed an impromptu spacewalk on Saturday afternoon, per a press release from NASA. The crew of the International Space Station discovered a small leak in the cooling system, and the Earth crew stayed up overnight to plan an expedition to repair it.

The leak was first detected on Thursday when the crew saw small “snowflakes” of ammonia floating away from the station, per the Associated Press. The leak was present for some time and located in the pump or flow control subassembly. When this suddenly accelerated, the increasing issue prompted engineers on the ground to start plotting a spacewalk to fix it.

NASA emphasized that the leak was small to start, but the agency wanted to take advantage of “a spacewalking crew member who is about to return home,” according to the AP. Thus, the astronauts replaced the 260-pound pump controller with a spare. The operation took about five and a half hours and, since the replacement, the leak appears to have stopped.