THERE WAS A TIME, not long ago, when spacewalks were considered risky business, almost feared. which again produces water in the helmet. But spacewalks don’t always run that smoothly, and one was coming that would test two astronauts-and their colleagues on the station and in mission control-with some of the tensest moments in EVA history. What astronaut wouldn’t be?Īs it turned out, the astronauts were able to replace a suspect part on the ammonia pump and in just a few hours were back inside. And without saying a word, we high-fived.” They were more than happy to squeeze in another EVA, absolutely. “All I could see was his white teeth smiling,” recalls Cassidy, “and I think he saw the same thing on me. lab, where Marshburn was already up, having just read the same news. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes and still in his boxers, Cassidy floated down the dark passage toward the U.S. That’s why Cassidy couldn’t believe what he now saw on his laptop screen in big red letters: “Welcome to EVA prep day.” He and fellow NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn were going outside-tomorrow. Plus, half the crew was packing up to return to Earth in just four days. Houston ordinarily didn’t like to rush into anything, let alone an EVA. Cassidy was of the opinion that NASA would probably wait until he and Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, who was scheduled to arrive in a couple of weeks, could do an extravehicular activity-NASA parlance for a spacewalk-to assess the problem. Over dinner that night, the astronauts and cosmonauts had discussed their options. Not an emergency, but it would have to be fixed. Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov had noticed little ammonia snowflakes outside the window sputtering from the cooling system, the space equivalent of a slow drip. When he and the five other astronauts on the International Space Station had gone to bed, mission control was pondering a problem: a leak outside the station the astronauts had discovered earlier that day. Chris Cassidy woke on his 43rd morning in space, a Friday, and before even switching on the light in his tiny sleeping quarters, opened his laptop to read the daily report.
0 kommentar(er)
