After finding problems with their US space suits, the International Space Station crew is switching to two new Russian space suits for a crucial space walk scheduled for June.
The 4.5-hour spacewalk is needed to fix an earlier glitch with the station itself. On April 21, a power controller failed, shutting off power to one of the three gyroscopes that control the station's alignment. The two remaining gyros can keep the station in place, but any further gyro failures would require firing on-board thrusters to keep the station properly aligned.
The failed power controller is on an exterior truss on the US side of the station, about a 10-metre crawl from the US Quest airlock. Mission controllers planned to use the US suits for the spacewalk because they are the only ones compatible with the communication system inside the Quest airlock.
However, that plan went awry on 19 May when Russian Commander Gennady Padalka and US science officer Mike Fincke were checking out their suits. They found problems with Fincke's suit, traced to a sticky valve, though this fault was not regarded as critical.
However, the cooling unit in Padalka's suit failed to operate, which is critical. They saw bubbles in the cooling water, so the two drained the lines and refilled them.
However, this and other remedies failed to fix the problem, and station controllers did not want to delay the gyro repair further. So, on Monday, they decided to switch to two new Russian Orlan suits delivered in January by a Progress supply capsule.
More: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995034
The 4.5-hour spacewalk is needed to fix an earlier glitch with the station itself. On April 21, a power controller failed, shutting off power to one of the three gyroscopes that control the station's alignment. The two remaining gyros can keep the station in place, but any further gyro failures would require firing on-board thrusters to keep the station properly aligned.
The failed power controller is on an exterior truss on the US side of the station, about a 10-metre crawl from the US Quest airlock. Mission controllers planned to use the US suits for the spacewalk because they are the only ones compatible with the communication system inside the Quest airlock.
However, that plan went awry on 19 May when Russian Commander Gennady Padalka and US science officer Mike Fincke were checking out their suits. They found problems with Fincke's suit, traced to a sticky valve, though this fault was not regarded as critical.
However, the cooling unit in Padalka's suit failed to operate, which is critical. They saw bubbles in the cooling water, so the two drained the lines and refilled them.
However, this and other remedies failed to fix the problem, and station controllers did not want to delay the gyro repair further. So, on Monday, they decided to switch to two new Russian Orlan suits delivered in January by a Progress supply capsule.
More: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995034
