CHAPTER 20 DAY IN THE LIFE: WHEN MAJOR ANOMALIES OCCUR 374 Some interesting and nail-biting moments occurred in space and in the Mission Control during this part of the EVA. First, one of the critical fluid QDs would not come free from its temporary location, thus it could not be connected to the new Pump Module. The button that needed to be pushed on the top of the QD could not be depressed. The crew and the ground team (Figure 15) worked together for quite some time on tool and other solutions, and eventually the QD came off. During the QD operations, some ammonia flakes came out, possibly causing suit contamination. However, when Mission Control sent a command to vent part of the system, a more-disturbing “cloud” of flakes surrounded both Hopkins and Mastracchio, clearly giving them both a good chance of having ammonia on their spacesuits. The vent was not expected to have this effect, and the surprise was not welcomed. The crew looked at the spacesuits and did not see visible ammonia ice crystals on the suits. The ground team later had the crew members perform a An Unexpected Walk in Space Colonel Michael Hopkins, Expedition 37/38 December 11, 2013, started out like most days on station. Rick [Mastracchio], Koichi [Wakata], Oleg [Kotov], Sergey [Ryazansky], Mikhail [Tyurin] and I woke up at our normal times, ate breakfast, drank coffee, cleaned up, and began executing the scheduled activities. Later that day, a warning alarm sounded, which brought us all floating to one of our Personal Computer System computers to determine what had gone wrong and what actions we needed to take as crew. However, before we even had a chance to open any corrective procedures, Mission Control Center-Houston called with a message: “We see the warning on the board, no action for the crew at this time.” This direction from the ground team was not unexpected because they are often able to correct failures from their work stations allowing those of us on-orbit to continue executing the planned science experiments and maintenance events. This teamwork between the astronauts and flight controllers is one of the strengths of ISS operations because the on-board crew can focus on those items that can only be accomplished by someone physically located with the equipment in space, and the true system experts—i.e. the flight controllers—can diagnose and often resolve ISS issues with little to no actions from the crew. My crewmates and I went back to the schedule and continued chasing the red line (the daily schedule uses a red line to indicate current time and astronauts try to complete their tasks before the red line crosses the activity). We did not have a full understanding of the scope of the problem, and we certainly did not understand the flurry of activity taking place on the ground. However, later in the day when Mission Control asked for assistance with some hardware power-down and cross-coupling activities, we knew this was not a run-of-the-mill malfunction that would be resolved by morning Daily Planning Conference (see Chapter 2). At some point over the next couple of days, we had a video conference with our lead flight director, Judd Frieling, and he explained the scope of the malfunction with the Pump Module of one of the external cooling loops, and the multiple options being considered by the ground teams, including the launch of Cygnus or a possible EVA solution. Now we did not have any scheduled EVAs as part of our increment, particularly with the ongoing investigation of water in the helmet. Therefore, any discussion of going out the door was very exciting while also highlighting the gravity of the situation. We informed the ground team that we were ready to support all of the options, that we were well rested, and that activities supporting both Cygnus capture and EVAs should be put on the schedule and task list. As a crew, we were determined to do what we could to keep all options on the table as long as possible. This started a 2-week period that was probably the most exciting time of Expedition 38, and was described by Rick, who had previously flown on the Space Shuttle three times, as a close representation of one of those 2-week missions. Over the next 10 days, there would be no days off, and work would often start before breakfast and continue well into the evening. During this time of uncertainty on the course of action, my crewmates and I often discussed the odds and made