Astronauts fix cosmic ray detector at the ISS

‘Compromising safety’

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla, Nov 17, (AP): Astronauts launched an extraordinarily complicated series of spacewalks Friday to fix a cosmic ray detector at the International Space Station.

Armed with dozens of dissecting tools, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano removed two protective covers to gain access to the inside of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. He handed them to his US spacewalking partner, American Andrew Morgan, for tossing overboard.

“OK, 3-2-1, release,” Morgan said as he let go of the 4-foot-long (127-centimeter) shield high above the Pacific.

Later, over the South Atlantic, Morgan ditched the second, smaller cover. “Another great pitch,” Mission Control radioed.

These latest pieces of space junk pose no danger to the orbiting lab, according to NASA. The larger shield should remain in orbit a year or so before re-entering the atmosphere and burning up. The smaller one should re-enter in a few weeks.

Parmitano

Spacewalks

NASA considers these spacewalks the most difficult since the Hubble Space Telescope repairs a few decades ago. Unlike Hubble, the spectrometer was never meant to undergo space surgery. After 8½ years in orbit, its cooling system is almost dead.

Parmitano and Morgan will go out at least four times this month and next to revitalize the instrument. Their second spacewalk is next Friday.

Delivered to orbit by Endeavour in 2011 on the nextto-last space shuttle flight, the $2 billion spectrometer is hunting for elusive antimatter and dark matter.

It’s already studied more than 148 billion charged cosmic rays. That’s more than what was collected in over a century by high-altitude balloons and small satellites, said lead scientist Samuel Ting, a Nobel laureate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He monitored Friday’s 6½-hour spacewalk from Mission Control in Houston.

The huge spectrometer – 16 feet by 13 feet by 10 feet (5 meters by 4 meters by 3 meters), with a mass of 7½ tons (6,800 kilograms) – was designed to operate for three years. By installing four new and improved coolant pumps, the astronauts can keep it working throughout the life of the space station, or another five to 10 years. The replacement pumps arrived at the space station nearly two weeks ago, along with an assortment of new tools.

Parmitano, the lead spacewalker, and Morgan trained extensively for the plumbing job before rocketing into orbit in July. They hustled through Friday’s cover removals and even got a jump on future chores.

Next week’s spacewalk will involve slicing through stainless steel tubes and splicing in connections for the new pumps, which like the old will use liquid carbon dioxide as the coolant.

In some respects, this work, 250 miles (400 kilometers) up, is even trickier than the Hubble spacewalks, said NASA project manager Ken Bollweg. As before, the stakes are high.

NASA auditors warned Thursday the space agency faces “significant safety and technical challenges” that need to be solved before astronauts fly in private capsules.

In its report, NASA’s inspector general office noted Boeing and SpaceX are several years late in transporting crews to the International Space Station. The private capsules likely won’t be certified before next summer, according to the report, and NASA should set a realistic timetable to avoid compromising safety.

NASA officials concurred with this and most of the other recommendations in the 53-page audit.

The auditors reported, meanwhile, that NASA overpaid Boeing $287.2 million to keep the company moving forward. Most of this overcharge was unnecessary, they said, a point with which NASA disagreed.

The report shows, on average, a seat on Boeing’s Starliner capsule will cost $90 million, almost double the price of a ride on SpaceX’s crew Dragon, at $55 million. That’s based on a crew of four flying one or two times a year.

In case of further delays by Boeing and SpaceX, NASA is seeking to buy extra seats on Russian rockets in 2020 and 2021, another recommendation of the auditors. NASA has been paying Russia to ferry astronauts to the space station since the shuttles stopped flying in 2011; the most recent price was about $82 million a seat.