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A decade ago, NASA, CERN, and dozens of other institutions banded together to build the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) at a toll of $2 billion. This avant-garde instrument has helped scientists written report dark thing from its perch on the International Space Station, but components have started failing in recent years. The AMS was never intended to be serviceable, but afterwards a series of spacewalks, astronauts have managed to resurrect this spendy scientific discipline module.

The AMS arrived at the International Space Station in 2011 on one of the terminal Space Shuttle cargo runs. The team didn't believe it would be possible to repair the instrument in orbit, so information technology wasn't designed with repairs in mind. The AMS was only supposed to operate for three years, simply the insights it provided into the nature and quantity of dark matter proved extremely valuable. Equally the instrument'south cooling pumps began failing, space agencies decided to have a shot at repairing the AMS.

NASA sent specialized tools and replacement parts to the ISS last year in grooming for the repair operation, which is expected to accept as many as v spacewalks. At that place are four coolant pumps in the AMS, just just 1 of them was operational past 2019 when the showtime spacewalk took place. The ISS crew completed two spacewalks in Nov 2019, and a third happened in Dec 2019. Last weekend, European Infinite Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano and Andrew Morgan of NASA completed the repairs on the fourth and last spacewalk.

The AMS mounted to the exterior of the ISS.

Repairing the AMS consisted of installing new cooling pumps (seen in the top image), replacing the ability and data cabling, and repressurizing the liquid carbon dioxide coolant. Most of the hardware piece of work was completed in the previous iii spacewalks, but Parmitano and Morgan needed to go over the instrument and check every plumbing fixtures and cable before pressurizing the new cooling organization. The pair did spot a pocket-size leak in one of the cooling lines, but they were able to rectify that by tightening the fitting.

The ground team has confirmed that early testing shows the AMS operating as expected. However, it's non ready to do science notwithstanding. The cooling system has to run for several more days to stabilize temperatures beyond the instrument, and and so the team will ability information technology on and run more tests. NASA believes the AMS volition be operation again past the end of side by side week.

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