In this image made from video provided by NASA, astronaut Christopher Cassidy, foreground, holds a power wrench as he stows away a suspect coolant pump on the International Space Station on Saturday, May 11, 2013. Thomas Marshburn is at left. The two astronauts made the spacewalk to replace the pump after flakes of frozen ammonia coolant were spotted outside the station on Thursday.CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Astronauts making a rare, hastily planned spacewalk replaced a pump outside the International Space Station on Saturday in hopes of plugging a serious ammonia leak.
The prospects of success grew as the minutes, then hours passed and no frozen flecks of ammonia appeared. Mission Control said it appeared as though the leak may have been plugged, although additional monitoring over the coming weeks will be needed before declaring a victory.
“I will tell you that we’re happy. We’re very happy,” said Joel Montalbano, NASA’s deputy space station program manager. “We didn’t see any obvious signs of a leak, but it’s going to take some time … for us to look at the system, evaluate the system and make sure we did, indeed, stop the leak.”
Montalbano expects it will take “a good four weeks, five weeks, maybe even a few weeks longer.”
“Obviously, the longer you go, the more confidence you get,” he told reporters.