Coolant Glitch Forces Partial Space Station Shutdown

astroengine writes "A coolant system glitch on the International Space Station has forced several of the orbital outpost's modules offline as astronauts and ground control manage the problem. The crew are not in danger and ground control teams are currently working to see how best to troubleshoot. The issue, that occurred early on Wednesday, focuses on one of the space station's two external ammonia cooling loops, along which the station's electrical systems use to regulate their temperatures. The loop 'automatically shut down when it reached pre-set temperature limits,' said NASA in a statement. It is thought that a flow control valve in the ammonia pump itself may have malfunctioned."

Re:Meanwhile...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As it happens, the US and Russians used pencils at first; but concluded that unpredictable addition of conductive graphite dust to the closed interiors of expensive, accident-prone aerospace hardware was a bad plan.

The Russians used grease pencils as a substitute for a while, since the binder keeps the pigment from floating around, and NASA took Fisher up on their offer to test some of their fancy new pressurized pens, which they eventually adopted (as did the Russians).