Two NASA astronauts were preparing to leave the International Space Station (ISS) for a second attempt at a spacewalk, but it was called off again due to a worrying space suit malfunction.
NASA had to cancel a spacewalk on Monday due to a water leak in the service and cooling umbilical cord of astronaut Tracy Dyson’s spacesuit. “There’s water everywhere,” Dyson was heard saying during the ISS livestream, pointing to an alarming glitch in the space station’s aging suits that has put other astronauts at risk in the past. NASA is in desperate need of new spacesuits for its astronauts, but in a worrying development, the company contracted to design the suits has just pulled out of the deal.
The two astronauts, Dyson and Mike Barratt, had not yet left the airlock when the problem occurred. However, the airlock had to be repressurized as the pair headed into the vacuum of space. Fortunately, the astronauts were safe.
This was the second postponement of the spacewalk within a week due to a space suit problem; On June 13, another spacewalk was canceled due to “space suit issues,” NASA said.
The astronauts aboard the ISS are ongoing procedural reviews of the space suit failure, troubleshooting and inspecting the suit components. An upcoming spacewalk is planned for July 2, pending the ongoing investigation.
Clearly, NASA astronauts need new suits; the spacesuits currently in use are more than 40 years old and too late for a major upgrade. It appears the space agency is also running out of fully functional spacesuits aboard the ISS, with only 18 usable units currently available for use by astronauts on the space station, according to a 2017 study. report.
In May 2022, NASA suspended spacewalks outside the ISS after a series of potentially life-threatening incidents involving water leaking into astronauts’ helmets during their spacewalks. NASA astronaut Raja Chari and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer were installing hoses on a radiator beam valve module outside the space station on March 23, 2022, when Maurer — venturing on his first spacewalk — spotted some water and moisture in his visor toward the noticed space. the end of the seven-hour spacewalk.
“NASA is considering the risks to these suits, which are aging, the [spacesuit] is currently a no-go for planned EVAs pending an investigation into what they discover,” Susan Helms, a former NASA astronaut who serves on NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said at the time. The space agency resumed ISS spacewalks shortly afterwards following an investigation into the leaks.
This was not the first incident with excess water. Back in 2013, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano noticed a water leak in his helmet that forced an early conclusion to the spacewalk. Parmitano was able to reenter the ISS airlock, but had difficulty breathing as 1.5 liters of water had built up in his helmet. “I feel it covering the sponge on my earphones and wonder if I will lose audio contact. The water has also almost completely covered the front of my visor, sticking to it and blurring my vision,” Parmitano said in a chilling manner. blog post later on.
The same suit worn by Parmitano nearly drowned another astronaut two years later. NASA astronaut Terry Virts, wearing space suit No. 3005, noticed free-floating water droplets and a damp absorption pad in his helmet at the end of his spacewalk.
NASA is working with its commercial partners to develop new spacesuits for its astronauts on the ISS, but it is taking longer than expected. The space agency awarded the prize in June 2022 contracts to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace to build spacesuits with a potential combined value of $3.5 billion. The suits were set to debut in 2025, but Collins Aerospace wants to pull out of the contract, SpaceNews reported on Wednesday.
“After a thorough review, Collins Aerospace and NASA mutually agreed to descope task orders for Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services (xEVAS),” the company wrote in a statement to SpaceNews. It’s not clear how NASA will proceed from here.
In a report released in January 2019, NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel assessed the increasing challenges of the spacesuits. “It is an undeniable fact that the 40-year-old EMUs used in ISS operations are reaching the end of their service life,” the report said. “NASA cannot sustain the necessary, sustained operations in low Earth orbit without fully functional EVA suits.”
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