NASA cosmonaut Jeanette Epps ( center ) assists NASA astronauts Mike Barratt ( leave ) and Tracy Dyson inside the station ’s Quest airlock on the daytime of an incident involving Dyson ’s incident . NASA TV
If you seem at the list of spacewalks that have taken position at the International Space Station ( ISS ) , you ’ll find that only two have taken lieu in 2024 , with the last one happening in June .
Considering that at least 12 took place each year between 2021 and 2023 , this is clearly an strange turn of events . But there ’s a sound reason for it .
NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps (center) assists NASA astronauts Mike Barratt (left) and Tracy Dyson inside the station’s Quest airlock on the day of an incident involving Dyson’s incident.NASA TV
NASAsuspended spacewalks at the ISS in Juneafter water leak out from the service and cooling umbilical social unit on a spacesuit worn by American cosmonaut Tracy Dyson shortly after the place ’s hatch was unfold at the start of a planned walk .
In response , NASA decide to suspend all spacewalks at the orbital facility to give engineers meter to investigate the issue and create a fix .
After put back a cachet and the umbilical connection that links the spacesuit to the ISS , the compromise suit was successfully repressurized , though additional testing was needed to confirm that the courting design was reliable and dependable .
With the issue apparently now decide , Bill Spetch , operations and integration director of NASA ’s ISS program , said in a late press conference that the space government agency plan to resume spacewalks some meter in 2025,Space.com reported .
A specific date has yet to be set , with Spetch explaining that it ’s “ just a matter of when is the right timing . ” He added that spacewalks are usually scheduled to take stead between spacecraft arrivals and going away , as well as around astronaut research activities .
As pointed out by Space.com , Dyson ’s courtship is from a design create in the seventies and used during the infinite bird program in the 1980s . It was also wear for walks in which astronauts constructed the ISS high above Earth , as well as for maintenance and upgrade oeuvre on the outside of the station over the last two decades . Now , NASA is look to supersede the aging courting with a more mobile and comfortable design based on the onetested by Jared Isaacmanduring the late Polaris Dawn mission .
Despite using different spacesuits , Russia ’s Roscosmos space agency also suspended ISS spacewalks , likely as a precautionary standard and to allow time for exhaustive hindrance of all system and equipment related to spacewalks , include Roscosmos ’s own spacesuits , to ensure that everything ’s in social club .
