A spacewalk by two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station ended Monday morning almost as quickly as it began when water sprayed into the airlock from one of the spacesuits.
“There is water everywhere,” Tracy Dyson, one of the astronauts, reported to mission control.
That came a few minutes after she and Mike Barratt, the other astronaut participating in the spacewalk, switched their spacesuits to battery power, marking the start of the spacewalk at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Time.
“My visor was full of an arctic draft,” Ms Dyson reported.
She wiped away a layer of ice and could see that ice crystals were coming from a supply and cooling unit connected to her spacesuit. The connections provide power, oxygen and water while astronauts are in the airlock. The leak started when Ms. Dyson disconnected the unit.
“I could see the ice crystals flowing out there,” Ms Dyson said. “Just like a snow cone machine, ice was forming at that opening.”
The space station management in Houston then aborted the spacewalk. NASA stated that the astronauts were never in danger.
The abbreviated spacewalk was the latest in a series of mishaps NASA has experienced this month. Other problems included a previously postponed spacewalk and delays in the return of two astronauts to Earth aboard a Boeing space capsule called the Starliner, which is on its first trip to the space station with astronauts on board.
On Monday, the leak stopped when Ms Dyson reconnected the power pack. She and Mr Barratt were back in the space station and out of their spacesuits 45 minutes later. Although they never floated out of the hatch, they were still credited with a 31-minute spacewalk – the time from when the internal batteries were turned on to when the airlock was repressurized.
They were scheduled to spend six and a half hours outdoors. Their main tasks were to remove a broken electronics box from a communications antenna and to collect samples from the outside of the space station. The goal was to find out if microorganisms could survive in the harsh, airless and radiation-plagued environment of space.
It was the second aborted spacewalk this month for Ms Dyson. She and Matthew Dominick, another NASA astronaut currently on the space station, were scheduled to conduct the spacewalk on June 13, but it was postponed when Mr Dominick reported an “uncomfortable spacesuit issue.”
NASA did not provide further details about the incident, and Mr. Barratt subsequently replaced Mr. Dominick, who was already scheduled for a later spacewalk. “We had a suit ready for him,” Dana Weigel, NASA’s space station program manager, said at a news conference on June 18. “We decided it just made sense to use Tracy and Mike.”
Another NASA spacewalk is planned for July 2, but those plans may now change.
The spacesuits NASA astronauts currently wear on spacewalks are more than four decades old, dating back to the Space Shuttle era. The space agency has hired Collins Aerospace to provide replacement suits for use on the space station. (Another company, Axiom Space, is developing spacesuits for NASA astronauts to wear on their moonwalks.)
Malfunctions in current spacesuits are rare but can be serious. In 2013, Luca Parmitano, a European Space Agency astronaut, nearly drowned when water collected in his helmet after a fan pump became clogged. Monday’s problem involved a different part of the spacesuit.
NASA managers also continue to work to understand the problems experienced by Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. Starliner, carrying two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, successfully docked with the space station on June 6. The mission is part of a test flight of the spacecraft, and the Starliner’s propulsion system has suffered five leaks of helium, which is used to pump fuel to the engines. Several of the engines also malfunctioned as Starliner made its docking approach.
Boeing and NASA engineers believe that the helium leaks are small and will not pose a serious problem on the return flight. After brief test firings a week ago, all engines except one now appear to be working properly again.
However, NASA managers also decided to spend more time reviewing the data and have pushed back the return until July at the earliest. The Starliner spacecraft is authorized to dock with the space station for 45 days, until July 21. The mission was originally scheduled for only eight days, and Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams have now been on the space station for 18 days.