‘Houston, We Have a Leak’

 

A leak inside an Italian astronaut’s helmet caused NASA to cut short a spacewalk by two crew members of the International Space Station (ISS) Tuesday, making for the second shortest spacewalk in ISS history, the US space agency said.

European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Luca Parmitano reported feeling “a lot of water” on the back of his head when he and US flight engineer Chris Cassidy were about an hour into a planned six hour spacewalk, during which they were supposed to prepare the orbital outpost for a new Russian laboratory module set to arrive later this year and conduct other maintenance tasks. The water eventually got into Parmitano’s eyes and drenched his nose and mouth.

Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston decided to abruptly end the spacewalk, even though “the water was not an immediate health hazard for Parmitano,” NASA said. NASA engineers “do not have any cause for the leak at this point,” spokesman Rob Navias.

The aborted spacewalk was the second shortest in ISS history. The record for the shortest ISS spacewalk belongs to US astronaut Mike Fincke, who in 2004 was outside the space station for just 14 minutes when a pressure sensor problem was detected in his Russian space suit.

After returning to the airlock of the space station Tuesday, Parmitano had to be helped by other ISS crew members to quickly remove his suit.

Tuesday’s spacewalk was Parmitano’s second and Cassidy’s sixth trip outside the ISS. The two were supposed to prepare for the arrival of the new Russian lab, replace a video camera, relocate wireless television camera equipment, troubleshoot a problem with a cover over electronic relay boxes on the space station’s truss, and reconfigure thermal insulation over a failed electronics box that was removed from the station’s truss last year.

None of the tasks that Cassidy and Parmitano were scheduled to do during the spacewalk were urgent or vital to the safety of the crew on board the ISS, NASA said.