Two NASA astronauts’ walk to the International Space Station ended almost as soon as it began Monday morning when water began spraying from one of the spacesuits into the airlock.
“There’s water everywhere,” reported Tracy Dyson, one of the astronauts, to mission control.
That was minutes after she and Mike Barratt, another astronaut participating in the spacewalk, switched their suits to battery power, marking the start of the spacewalk at 8:46 a.m. ET.
“I’ve got arctic blast all over my visor,” reported Mrs. Dyson.
She brushed away the layer of ice, allowing her to see ice crystals coming from the service and cooling umbilical unit attached to her space suit. The connections provide power, oxygen and water while the astronauts are in the airlock. The leak started when Mrs Dyson unplugged the unit.
“I saw ice crystals coming out of there,” Ms Dyson said. “Like a snow cone machine, ice was forming in that harbor.
Space station controllers in Houston then called off the spacewalk. NASA said the astronauts were never in danger.
The shortened spacewalk was the latest in a series of glitches NASA has experienced this month. Other problems include an earlier delayed spacewalk and a delay in the return to Earth of a pair of astronauts aboard the Boeing space capsule, known as Starliner, which is on its first trip to the space station with astronauts on board.
On Monday, the leak stopped when Mrs Dyson reconnected the umbilical unit. She and Mr Barratt were back on the space station and 45 minutes later they were out of their suits. Although they never emerged outside the hatch, they were still credited with a 31-minute spacewalk—the time from when they turned on the internal batteries until the pressure chamber was re-pressurized.
They were to spend six and a half hours outside. Their main mission was to remove a malfunctioning electronics box from a communications antenna and collect samples from the outside of the space station as part of a scientific investigation to see if microorganisms could survive the harsh, airless, radiation-scarred environment of space.
It was Ms Dyson’s second aborted spacewalk this month. She and Matthew Dominick, another NASA astronaut currently on the space station, were scheduled to go into space on June 13, but that was postponed when Mr. Dominick reported a “spacesuit discomfort issue.”
NASA did not provide further details about what happened, and Mr Barratt then replaced Mr Dominick, who was already due to take part in a subsequent spacewalk. “We had a suit ready for him,” Dana Weigel, space station program manager at NASA, said at a June 18 news conference. “We decided it made sense to go ahead and use Tracy and Mike.
NASA has scheduled its next spacewalk for July 2, but those plans may now change.
The spacesuits currently worn by NASA astronauts on spacewalks are more than four decades old, dating back to the early space shuttle era. The space agency hired Collins Aerospace to provide a replacement for use on the space station. (Another company, Axiom Space, is developing spacesuits for NASA astronauts to wear when they walk on the moon.)
Malfunctions of current spacesuits are rare but potentially dire. In 2013, European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned when water pooled in his helmet after the ventilator pump became blocked. Monday’s problem involved a different part of the suit.
NASA managers are also still working to understand the problems facing Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. The Starliner, carrying two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, successfully docked with the space station on June 6. The mission is part of the spacecraft’s shakedown flight, and the Starliner’s propulsion system suffered five leaks of helium, which is used to push propellant into the jets. Several thrusters also failed as the Starliner approached the dock.
Boeing and NASA engineers believe the helium leaks are small and will not pose a serious problem during the return trip. All but one of the nozzles are now working properly after short test shots a week ago.
However, NASA managers also decided to spend more time reviewing the data and delayed the return to a date of July at the earliest. The Starliner spacecraft is approved for a 45-day landing at the space station, or until July 21. Originally scheduled to last just eight days, Mr Wilmore and Ms Williams have now been on the space station for 18 days. .