Posted on 06/25/2024 9:47:38 AM PDT by Red Badger
NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps (center) is pictured assisting NASA astronauts Mike Barratt (left) and Tracy C. Dyson (right) inside the Quest airlock.
Image Credit: NASA TV
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NASA astronauts Tracy C. Dyson and Mike Barratt were supposed to go on a spacewalk on Monday, June 24 – but a fault led to the expected 6-and-a-half-hour walk being cut down to just 31 minutes. There was a water leak from the service and cooling umbilical unit on Dyson’s spacesuit that was described on the live stream by Dyson as spreading water "everywhere" in the airlock.
The pair had already switched to the internal power of the suits – so technically the spacewalk had begun – and had opened the hatch to the Quest airlock. Then they became aware of the water issue.
“The crew members were not in any danger as result of the leak. Dyson and Barratt set their suits to battery power at 8:46 a.m. EDT and opened the International Space Station’s Quest airlock hatch to the vacuum of space before reporting the water issue,” a NASA blog post about the event reads. “The spacewalk lasted a total of 31 minutes, when the crew suits repressurized the crew lock section of the airlock at 9:17 a.m.”
Spacewalking comes with risks – NASA estimates that around one-fifth of extravehicular activity ends up having either serious incidents or close calls. If we need to remember water-leak ones, we could think of ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano almost drowning in space. In that case, water was accumulating in the inside of his suit and helmet, slowly making its way across his face to his nose and mouth.
Nothing as dangerous and dramatic happened in this case. Dyson and Barratt were going to remove a faulty electronics box from a communication antenna in the starboard truss of the International Space Station. They were also going to collect samples to see if microorganisms can survive in the vacuum of space around the station.
The microbe collecting is an ongoing series of investigations inside and outside the space station to understand how microbes are adapting to the space environment. Some recent studies have shown that some have mutated in such a way that they are no longer similar to their Earthly counterparts.
The spacewalk has not been rescheduled and it might push the next spacewalk, planned for July 2, forward as well.
🎬🍿🥤
Democrat vote stealing went bad. Water leak in the wrong place.
How is that DEI working out Boeing?
Perfect 😂
Heh
"Meet #TeamBoeing"
Are we about to see a tragedy in space due to these morons?
If the starliner fails to return the astronauts, nasa should be shut down.
I hope Musk is getting something ready to go up there.
I used to have an office at Boeing just down from LAX airport because my company was teamed with them on two programs. I was shocked when they had a table set up in the lobby for gay pride celebration staffed all day, for what I think was the whole month, by gay Boeing employees that looked bizarre. It was only a few years later that my company had gay pride month on their website home page. I have much more that happened regarding gays in corporate America and me that I may share later.
Boeing doesn’t make the EVA suits used on the ISS. They’re made by ILC Dover, the same company that made the suits for Apollo.
That doesn’t inspire confidence.
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