And that's a wrap
I think that’s enough spacefaring excitement for one day. There you have it: Britain’s first ESA astronaut has completed his first spacewalk. It may have ended early, but when Scott Kelly, the station commander, got Peake out of is spacesuit, the man from Chichester was grinning like a Cheshire cat. Good to see both Tims safely back inside.
Thanks to all of you who joined us for what turned out to be a truly exhilarating day.
Scott Kelly and Yuri Malenchenko have just pulled Tim Peake inside what’s called the equipment lock. Time for Tim Peake to doff his spacesuit now. Sergey Volkov has taken a picture and I’ll bet he caught Peake grinning from ear to ear.
Scott Kelly has retrieved 15cc of water from Kopra’s helmet. When Luca Parmitano’s helmet began to fill up with water on a spacewalk in July 2013, he ended up with 1.5 litres in there. A far more serious incident.
This was the 192nd spacewalk from the International Space Station. In total, astronauts have clocked up 49 days and 23 hours on spacewalks to build and maintain the ISS. This is Kopra’s 3rd spacewalk, bringing his total to 13 hours 31 mins. It was the first for Peake, lasting 4 hours 43 mins.
Before Kopra can take his suit off, the crew will use a syringe to extract some of the water from his helmet for analysis. That could contain material that helps identify the cause of the leak.
Scott Kelly and Sergey Volkov will open the hatch to allow the Tims back into the space station proper. They will then undergo what Nasa calls an “expedited doffing of their suits.”
The spacewalk has ended
Nasa has confirmed the end of the spacewalk at 17.31GMT. Both astronauts are in the space station but are waiting for the airlock to re-pressurise before they can get further inside and get their suits off. One of the first tasks once inside will be to check Kopra’s helmet. He didn’t have much water in there, but they’ll need to know where that came from.
Kopra and Peake thanked the space station team for their support in getting the station back up to full power. Scott Kelly inside the station is now taking over communications with the two astronauts. The airlock is still re-pressurising. We should see that hatch to the rest of the station open soon.
The rest of the ISS crew are standing by to help Kopra and Peake clear the airlock once it has repressurised.
The outer thermal cover is closed, with the astronauts back inside the airlock. The outer hatch isn’t yet closed.
Once the astronauts are back inside the station, they’ll take detailed photos of the suits. This is normal procedure, but obviously given leakage into Kopra’s helmet, they will pay special attention to his suit. Incidentally, he’s reported that the water bubble isn’t getting bigger.
When Kopra tasted the water, he told control that it was cold. It’s thought that the water has come from a cooling loop within the suit.
Kopra has agreed and they are both back at the airlock and about to enter.
Control want Kopra to enter the airlock first, which will put Peake in charge of the hatch in case Kopra gets “too saturated”.
Kopra is saying that the water pool in his helmet is about four inches long and about two inches wide.
If you remember, back in 2013 ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano noticed water leaking steadily into his helmet. Since then the safety protocol has been to abort spacewalks if water appears. This is nowhere near as severe as that incident. Tim Peake noted that the water bubble in Kopra’s helmet is “less than golfball-size”.
Nasa are emphasising that this is not an emergency, but combined with the failure of one of Kopra’s CO2 sensors it seems prudent to bring the crew back inside as they’ve completed the main objective of today’s spacewalk.
EVA terminated
Today’s EVA has been terminated - both astronauts will be returning to the airlock.
Kopra has been told to head back to the airlock.
Tim Kopra has reported water in his helmet
Tim Kopra has a small amount of water in his helmet - the ground control have asked him to try to taste it (partly so he can tell them what its temperature is) it so they can ascertain where it has come from ...
Just a reminder of the huge variation in temperature the sunrise and sunset can bring:
Tim Kopra has finished his valve installation. And just in case you missed it, here’s a video of the two Tims undertaking the main repair earlier. And we’re just coming up to another sunrise.
is hard at work laying out cable that will be attached along the Destiny laboratory and the Harmony module. The cable is for new docking adaptors that will allow the arrival of future crew and commercial vehicles.
Tim Kopra has apparently done an excellent job on his task; the control room has just made this generous promise: “We’ll buy you a soda when you get home”.
Nasa are swapping satellites so that they can view the next stages of the spacewalk, which means communications and pictures from the ISS will be temperamental for the next few minutes.
Kopra is at the Tranquility module preparing to start his task, which is to install a non-propulsive valve.
Peake is moving onto his next task: cable routing. Here he is from Kopra’s helmet cam.
Meanwhile, Peake has safely stowed the faulty unit back inside the airlock. Nasa have made a nice gif of him making his way along to the airlock.
Tim Peake’s wife seems to have spotted a family snap out there in space with him ...
The routine glove check also showed up a small rip in the surface layer of one of Kopra’s gloves, but again, no cause for concern.
No comments:
Post a Comment