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[b]Repair spacewalks being discussed[/b] One of two ammonia-fed cooling loops on the International Space Station remains shut down after an attempt to restart its pump module failed early Sunday morning. The pump module's circuit breaker initially tripped Saturday night, but had successfully been reset overnight. It tripped again Sunday when the pump module was restarted. Teams in Mission Control in Houston are reviewing data to determine whether to attempt another restart and are discussing options to perform two spacewalks later this week to replace the pump module. Two spare pump modules are housed on platforms on the outside of the station. The space station crew is in no danger and all systems are stable, though operating in a "single string" mode without redundancy. Two of the four main buss switching units are cooled by the failed loop. The units switch and route power to various station systems. Mission Control is evaluating whether the heat generation may be low enough to not require powering off these switching units. With the loss of the cooling loop, several systems have been and remain shut down, including one of two S-band communication circuits, one Global Positioning System (GPS) circuit, several DC to DC current converters in Tranquility Node 3 and a set of components that route commands to station equipment. Though two of the four station Control Moment Gyroscopes (CMGs) initially were turned off, the crew installed a jumper cable to regain a third gyro. The gyroscopes maintain the station's attitude in space.
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