Spacewalk cut short over suit leak
Wednesday, 22 July 2009 22:22NASA has cut short a spacewalk outside the International Space Station after carbon dioxide began building up in one astronaut's spacesuit.
The outing, by shuttle Endeavour's lead spacewalker David Wolf and rookie astronaut Chris Cassidy, was called off shortly before 9pm Irish time as the astronauts were replacing batteries in the station's solar power system.
Two of four batteries were installed when Mission Control told the crew to head back to the airlock. They had been spacewalking for about six hours when Cassidy's suit began having problems.
Sensors showed a build up of carbon dioxide. The gas, a by-product of breathing, typically is chemically removed by a canister of lithium hydroxide.
'It seems like the canister itself is experiencing some problems,' astronaut Aki Hoshide radioed to the Endeavour crew from Mission Control in Houston.
'It's not an imminent failure', Mr Hoshide added. 'We just wanted to make sure that you guys are back in the airlock'.
The spacewalk was the third of five planned during shuttle Endeavour's ongoing mission at the space station.
