A spacewalk by two NASA astronauts aboard the Worldwide House Station ended shortly after it started Monday morning when water from a spacesuit started seeping into an airlock.
“There’s water in every single place,” Tracy Dyson, one of many astronauts, reported to Mission Management.
This was minutes after he and Mike Barratt, one other astronaut taking part within the spacewalk, switched their spacesuits to battery energy, beginning the spacewalk at 8:46 a.m. ET.
“I obtained an arctic blast throughout my visor,” reported Mrs. Dyson.
He wiped off a layer of ice, permitting him to see that the ice crystals have been coming from a service-and-cooling core unit hooked up to his spacesuit. Connections present energy, oxygen and water whereas the astronauts are within the airlock. The leak began when Mrs. Dyson disconnected the unit.
“I may see snowflakes flying up there,” Ms Dyson mentioned. “Similar to a snow cone machine, ice was forming on that harbor.”
House station controllers in Houston then aborted the spacewalk. NASA mentioned there was by no means any hazard to the astronauts.
The shortened spacewalk was the most recent in a sequence of issues NASA skilled this month. Different points embody a beforehand postponed spacewalk and a delay within the return to Earth of a pair of astronauts in a Boeing area capsule, known as Starliner, on its first journey to the area station with astronauts. .
On Monday, the leak stopped when Ms Dyson reconnected the nuclear unit. He and Mr. Barratt have been contained in the area station and out of their spacesuits 45 minutes later. Though they by no means floated outdoors the hatch, they have been credited with a 31-minute spacewalk—from the time they activated the inner batteries till the airlock was repressed.
They’d set a time to spend six and a half hours outdoors. Their most important process was to take away a broken electronics field from a communications antenna and gather samples from the outside of the area station as a part of a scientific examine to see if microorganisms may survive within the harsh, airless, radiation-tainted atmosphere of area. can survive
For Ms. Dyson, it was the second interrupted spacewalk this month. He and Matthew Dominik, one other NASA astronaut presently on the area station, have been scheduled to do a spacewalk on June 13, nevertheless it was postponed when Mr. Dominik reported “spacesuit discomfort points.”
NASA didn’t present further particulars about what occurred, and Mr. Barratt then changed Mr. Dominick, who was already scheduled to take part in a later spacewalk. “We had a swimsuit prepared for him,” Dana Weigel, NASA’s area station program supervisor, mentioned at a June 18 information convention. “We determined it made sense to go forward and use Tracy and Mike.”
NASA has one other spacewalk scheduled for July 2, however these plans could now change.
The spacesuits that NASA astronauts presently put on for spacewalks are greater than 4 many years outdated, relationship again to the daybreak of the area shuttle period. The area company has employed the corporate Collins Aerospace to supply replacements to be used on the area station. (One other firm, Axiom House, is growing area fits for NASA astronauts Wear when they walk on the moon.)
Present spacesuit malfunctions are uncommon however doubtlessly catastrophic. In 2013, Luca Parmitano, a European House Company astronaut Almost drowned When water pooled in his helmet after a fan pump shut down. Monday’s downside concerned a separate a part of the area swimsuit.
NASA managers are nonetheless working to grasp the issues skilled by Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Taking two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams, Starliner efficiently docked with the area station on June 6. The mission is a part of the spacecraft’s swing flight, and Starliner’s propulsion system suffered 5 leaks of helium, which is used to push propellant to the thrusters. Many thrusters too The Starliner malfunctioned as it made its docking approach.
Engineers at Boeing and NASA imagine the helium leaks are small and won’t trigger any critical issues through the return journey. After a brief take a look at firing every week in the past all however one thruster now seems to be working correctly.
Nonetheless, NASA managers additionally determined to spend extra time reviewing the information, and pushed again the return to a date in July on the earliest. The Starliner spacecraft has been authorized for a 45-day docking with the area station, or till July 21. The mission was initially meant to final solely eight days, and Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams have now been on the area station for 18 days. .
