Astronauts to resume spacewalks outside International Space Station
Those of you who keep a close tab on what astronauts are doing next in the outer space, you might know that earlier this year (23rd March, 2022), during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS), traces of water were found inside a spacesuit. To put things in perspective, there was a slim layer of moisture traced inside a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut’s helmet post a prolonged (lasting almost seven hours) spacewalk. He was none other than German astronaut Matthias Maurer.
As you know, space has zero gravity and it’s the sturdy spacesuits that keep astronauts from any harm. As a result, when this strange incident had occurred, spacewalks had come to an abrupt halt.
But now, after a thorough investigation, NASA, the American space agency has given a go ahead to resume spacewalks outside the microgravity flying space laboratory, ISS. But when and why exactly did this weird incident happen? Turns out, it happened all of a sudden when the astronauts were preparing for a new solar array installation outside the ISS and felt a change in air pressure. Now, as for the why, NASA has concluded that there was as such no particular hardware flaw with the suit itself. Instead, crew exertion combined with crew cooling settings had led to the formation of larger than normal amounts of condensation within the spacesuit’s system.
Are you wondering whether any extra safety measures have been implemented? Well, yes! NASA has updated procedures and even developed “new mitigation hardware” to lower water accumulation and to even absorb any that does get accumulated in the helmet.
Okay, so when can the astronauts resume activity? That would be in mid-November. In fact, this step will end the seven-month long hiatus of the them being completely airlocked inside the ISS and once again float around in the vacuum of the outer space safely. In fact, three spacewalks are already scheduled for the end of the year to install a brand-new set of roll-out solar arrays (called iROSA) and their support hardware on the station itself. It will be part of NASA’s SpaceX CRS-26 cargo mission. These solar arrays are expected to boost the power capacity of ISS.