Posts Tagged ‘ISS’
Astronaut Chris Cassidy Explains the Helmet Leak
If you’ve been following space news at all recently, you probably heard that on an ISS spacewalk, there was a malfunction in astronaut Luca Parmitano’s suit that led to water slowly leaking into his helmet. The flow was such that they were able to take a measured approach to considering the situation and getting Parmitano back inside the station (and even take some photos while ground control was mulling over the issue), but it could easily have been much more desperate if the flow had been worse.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been eager to hear an explanation on what happened, and NASA has just released a video from Luca’s companion on the spacewalk, Chris Cassidy. So, here’s what we know so far:
It sounds like, for now, the rest of the spacewalk hasn’t been rescheduled. There’s no telling how long it will be before they can certify that the problem won’t recur on other suits or come up with a fix. It’s already been quite a while, and I’m a bit disheartened to hear that they haven’t figured it out to the extent that they can get a new spacewalk scheduled.
SpaceX Launch Delayed . . . Again
So, crossing your finger really doesn’t work, though I guess we should do some double-blind trials just to make sure.
The launch of SpaceX‘s Falcon 9/Dragon flight to the ISS went all the way to ignition early this morning, but engine five had abnormally high chamber pressure readings on lighting, requiring a computerized abort. SpaceX confirmed that this was not the result of a sensor malfunction nor any computer glitch. The fuel valve was apparently operating normally, so we’re still waiting to find out exactly what went wrong.
SpaceX noted that while a failure of two engines during flight would not cause a failure, all nine engines have to be operational for a successful liftoff. Pressure problems have occurred in testing and during the first demonstration flight as well, though in the first test the pressure was off by a narrower margin, suggesting a different fault.