A spacewalk began Monday to repair damage to the cooling system of the International Space Station (ISS), NASA said.
NASA posted an update on social networking website Twitter early Monday, which confirmed that the spacewalk began at about 6:20am Eastern Time and was expected to last “about 6.5 hours.”
A NASA statement released last week said the spacewalk was the third designed to “restore full cooling capacity” to the ISS.
Expedition 24 flight engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson are expected to install a replacement pump and connect electrical and fluid lines during the spacewalk.
The pump, which failed July 31, was removed during a spacewalk last Wednesday.
The failed pump caused a loss of half of the station’s cooling system, but the station has since run normally on a second ammonia pump used for cooling electronics.