Posted 8/03/2010 08:40:00 PM by Douglas

So the sun is exploding:

Night owls take note: A spectacular sky show of rippling auroras may be on tap for late Tuesday through early Wednesday, according to astrophysicists, and the phenomenon may be more widely visible than normal.

On Sunday cameras aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an eruption on the sun's surface that hurled tons of plasma—charged gas—directly toward our planet in an event called a coronal mass ejection.

If you had a space station, it would sure be a bad time to lose cooling, would it?

NASA says it needs more time to prepare before sending two astronauts on a spacewalk to replace a broken pump on the station's cooling system. The pump failed over the weekend and knocked out half of the space station's cooling system, which keeps electronic equipment from overheating.

Managers had been hoping to do the first spacewalk on Thursday but decided workers on the ground needed more time to work on the repair plan. A second spacewalk will be conducted a few days later to complete the repairs.

Should be an interesting EVA. Should go something like this: