Reading time: 2 minutes – Spotted on Futurism, The New York Times
It should have been a spacewalk like any other, but what Tracy C. Dyson experienced on Monday, June 24, was fortunately not routine. As she (temporarily) left the International Space Station (ISS), the American NASA astronaut quickly realized that water was gushing out of her spacesuit, causing ice to immediately form at the visor of her helmet. Its mission, which consisted of removing a defective electronic box and collecting samples of microorganisms outside the station, is therefore postponed to a later date.
It was a few moments after putting his suit on battery that Tracy C. Dyson became aware of what was happening, reports the New York Times. It was in fact a leak from the umbilical cooling unit attached to his suit, which forced NASA to immediately cancel the spacewalk that the astronaut was to carry out with his colleague and compatriot Michael R. Barratt .
“An arctic explosion”
In a report also transcribed on the Futurism website, the American space agency details Tracy C. Dyson’s comments after her discovery: “There’s water everywhere, I had an arctic blast all over my visor.” Later, she will say: “I could see the ice crystals flowing. It was like a machine making snow cones.”
The astronaut reacted well, since she reported the problem and quickly made a strategic withdrawal towards the interior of the ISS. It still took forty-five minutes to re-enter the station and remove the suits. But beforehand, Tracy C. Dyson had taken care to plug the leak, which allowed him to make a relatively peaceful return.
As Futurism reminds us and as we mentioned on June 14, this is the second time in less than two weeks that NASA has been forced to cancel a Tracy C. Dyson spacewalk. The first time, the problem came from a “spacesuit discomfort issue”reported by another of her colleagues, Matthew Dominick, with whom she was to work in pairs that day.
In addition to these two cancellations, NASA and Boeing also had to deal with several helium leaks that affected the Starliner spacecraft, which was supposed to bring astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth. The latter will have to be patient (or take advantage of the extension of their stay, a matter of point of view), because their departure from the ISS is postponed for the third time.
Futurism recalls that in 2022, other leak problems had been noted. On board the ISS, some crew members noticed that the inside of their helmets were gradually filling with water, which placed them in a rather uncomfortable situation. In 2013, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned when his helmet filled with water, “covering his eyes, nose and ears”. NASA then cut his exit short, allowing him to return as quickly as possible and remedy this problem, which was annoying to say the least.
