Water in the sublimator cooling component can condense when the suit is repressurized after a spacewalk, causing a small amount of water to push into the helmet, NASA said.
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How is Tim Peake feeling about his spacewalk?
Major Peake replied: “It’s great to be wearing it. A privilege, a proud moment”.
Crew member Scott Kelly photographed Major Peake’s gloves for “future reference and inspection”, the ESA said, before his helmet was removed too. Photographs will be taken of the affected suit to document how extensive the leak was.
Kopra and his spacewalking partner, British spaceman Timothy Peake, completed their No. 1 job early on in the spacewalk.
On Earth, Peake spent time rehearsing this particular walk, so he stands every chance of meeting all the targets – especially with help from the ISS as well as the folks back at Mission Control.
Colonel Kopra said “So far, I’m OK”.
Kopra said the wet spot was about four inches long and two inches high (10 by five centimeters).
“The crew is not in any danger whatsoever”, he said.
All Amateur Radio equipment on the ISS is routinely shut down during EVAs, effectively postponing planned commemorative ARISS slow-scan TV transmissions.
Down on Earth, 250 miles away, Reid Wiseman was communicating with Peake and Kopra during the fix mission.
CO2 sensors have been fitted in the helmets of astronauts since then, and these helped alert Colonel Kopra to the problem.
The pair ended the spacewalk with the repressurisation of the US Quest airlock.
Kopra, who was making his third spacewalk, and Peake had replaced a failed voltage regulator in the station’s power system shortly after leaving the station’s airlock at around 8 a.m. ET.
Afterward, they will route some cable and install a vent in a cramped space that spacewalk officer Paul Dum described this week as a “challenging work site”.
Tim will be working for six and a half hours, replacing a failed electrical box which regulates power from the solar panels. The arrays, altogether, can generate between 84 and 120 kilowatts of electricity – enough to power over 40 homes.
Tim Peake has become the first astronaut representing Britain to walk in space.
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“Spacewalks, like many critical operations, operate on the buddy-buddy system”.
