Cape Canaveral Aug. 17 (BUS): A Russian cosmonaut was forced to dash again inside the International Space Station on Wednesday when the battery voltage in his spacesuit suddenly dropped.
The Russian mission control unit ordered Oleg Artemyev, the station commander, to quickly return to the airlock so that he could attach his suit to power. The hatch remained open while his spacewalk partner, Denis Matveyev, arranged outside.
NASA said that neither of the two men was in any danger at all. In fact, Matveev stayed outside for another hour or so, before he was also asked to shut her down. Matveev’s suit was fine, but the Russian mission controller cut the spacewalk short because flight rules insist on a buddy system.
The astronauts were able to install cameras on the European Space Agency’s new robot arm before the problem broke out, barely two hours after a planned 6-and-a-half hour spacewalk, according to the Associated Press.
“You know, the start was pretty excellent,” Matveev said as he made his way inside, leaving some of the robot arm installation work undoing.
The 36-foot (11 meter) robotic arm arrived at the space station last summer aboard a Russian laboratory. Meanwhile, NASA’s spacewalks have been on hold for months.
In March, water leaked into the helmet of a German astronaut. The leak wasn’t quite as much as it did in 2013 when an Italian astronaut nearly drowned, but it’s still a safety concern. In the previous case, the water originated from the cooling system in the suit’s underwear.
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