A spacewalk by two NASA astronauts on the Worldwide House Station ended virtually as quickly because it started on Monday morning when water began squirting from one of many spacesuits into the airlock.
“There’s water in all places,” Tracy Dyson, one of many astronauts, reported to mission management.
That was a few minutes after she and Mike Barratt, the opposite astronaut participating in spacewalk, had switched their spacesuits to battery energy, which marked the beginning of the spacewalk at 8:46 a.m. Jap time.
“I obtained an arctic blast throughout my visor,” Ms. Dyson reported.
She wiped away a layer of ice, permitting her to see that ice crystals had been coming from a service-and-cooling umbilical unit that linked to her spacesuit. The connections present energy, oxygen and water whereas astronauts are within the airlock. The leak began when Ms. Dyson disconnected the unit.
“I may see the ice crystals flowing on the market,” Ms. Dyson mentioned. “Identical to a snow cone machine, there was ice forming at that port.”
House station controllers in Houston then referred to as off the spacewalk. NASA mentioned the astronauts had been by no means in any hazard.
The shortened spacewalk was the newest in a sequence of glitches that NASA has skilled this month. Different points have included an earlier postponed spacewalk and delays in returning a pair of astronauts to Earth aboard a Boeing area capsule, generally known as Starliner, which is on its first journey to the area station with astronauts aboard.
On Monday, the leak stopped when Ms. Dyson reconnected the umbilical unit. She and Mr. Barratt had been again contained in the area station and out of their spacesuits 45 minutes later. Although they by no means floated outdoors the hatch, they had been nonetheless credited with a 31-minute spacewalk — the size of time from after they turned on the interior batteries to when the airlock was repressurized.
They’d been scheduled to spend six and a half hours outdoors. Their foremost duties had been to take away a malfunctioning electronics field from a communications antenna and to gather samples from the outside of the area station as a part of scientific analysis to see if microorganisms can survive the tough, airless, radiation-scarred setting of area.
For Ms. Dyson, it was the second interrupted spacewalk this month. She and Matthew Dominick, one other NASA astronaut presently on the area station, had been scheduled to carry out the spacewalk on June 13, however that was postponed when Mr. Dominick reported a “spacesuit discomfort situation.”
NASA didn’t present further particulars on what occurred, and Mr. Barratt then changed Mr. Dominick, who was already scheduled to participate on a subsequent spacewalk. “We had a go well with prepared for him,” Dana Weigel, the area station program supervisor at NASA, mentioned at a information convention on June 18. “We determined it simply 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 a long time outdated, courting again to the start of the area shuttle period. The area company has employed the corporate Collins Aerospace to offer replacements to be used on the area station. (One other firm, Axiom House, is creating spacesuits for NASA astronauts to put on after they stroll on the moon.)
Malfunctions of the present spacesuits are uncommon however probably dire. In 2013, Luca Parmitano, a European House Company astronaut, almost drowned when water collected in his helmet after a fan pump turned blocked. Monday’s downside concerned a unique a part of the spacesuit.
NASA managers are additionally nonetheless working to know issues skilled by Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Carrying two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, Starliner efficiently docked on the area station on June 6. The mission is a part of a shakedown flight of the spacecraft, and Starliner’s propulsion system has suffered 5 leaks of helium, which is used to push propellant to the thrusters. A number of of the thrusters additionally malfunctioned as Starliner made its docking method.
Boeing and NASA engineers imagine that the helium leaks are small and won’t pose a significant issue through the return journey. All however one of many thrusters now seem like working correctly after brief check firings every week in the past.
Nevertheless, NASA managers additionally determined to spend extra time reviewing the info, and have pushed again the return till a date in July on the earliest. The Starliner spacecraft is accredited for 45 days of docking on the area station, or till July 21. The mission had been initially scheduled to final simply eight days, and Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams have now been on the area station for 18 days.
