By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA said a “spacesuit discomfort issue” forced the cancellation of a planned spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) by two U.S. astronauts on Thursday at about an hour before the start of your repair mission.
NASA astronauts Tracy C. Dyson and Matt Dominick, two of the orbiting laboratory’s six U.S. astronauts, donned their spacesuits Thursday morning in preparation for a roughly six-hour walk outside the ISS for repairs. routine and a scientific mission, as shown in a NASA live stream.
As other U.S. crew prepared the two astronauts inside the station’s Quest airlock — the exit module that separates the station’s interior from the vacuum of space — NASA astronaut Mike Barratt asked flight controllers in Houston for a communications line. privately to discuss a medical problem.
Minutes later, a NASA spokeswoman speaking on the live stream said that “today’s spacewalk will not occur as planned.”
“Today’s June 13 spacewalk to the International Space Station did not occur as scheduled due to a spacesuit discomfort issue,” NASA said later on its website.
The spacewalk mission was poised to be NASA’s 90th in the space station’s 23-year history, and its second this year. It would have been the fourth spacewalk for Dixon, who first flew into space in 2007, and the first for Dominick.
It was unclear what caused the spacesuit discomfort or whether an independent astronaut’s medical issue was a factor.
Previous spacewalks have been canceled due to problems with the station’s spacesuits, which were designed nearly half a century ago with only minor redesigns and renovations. NASA’s inspector general said they are ready for an upgrade, which NASA is paying Raytheon’s Collins Aerospace to do.
Before the cancellation of Thursday’s spacewalk, NASA accidentally broadcast Wednesday night on its YouTube live feed an emergency drill of astronauts being treated for decompression sickness on the ISS, raising public health alarm of US crew members.
NASA said there was no real emergency and that “the audio was inadvertently diverted from an ongoing simulation where crew members and ground teams train for various scenarios in space and are not related to an actual emergency.”
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
