Faulty spacesuit leads to cancelled spacewalk

by Stevie Smith - Jul 23 2009, 15:30

The space shuttle Endeavour and its crew of astronauts continue to be plagued by problems during mission STS-127 following news that a malfunctioning spacesuit forced NASA to cut short the third of its five scheduled spacewalks.

The exterior jaunt in question was being carried out by lead spacewalker David Wolfe and first-time astronaut Chris Cassidy, who were replacing battery cells in the station’s solar power system when NASA reported that one of their spacesuits was showing a potentially worrying build up of carbon dioxide.

Issuing its cancellation at around 20:00 GMT on Wednesday, some six hours into the spacewalk, NASA instructed the astronauts to return to the airlock, saying the problem was “not an imminent failure,” but adding that Mission Control was keen for them to return to the safety of the station.

The spacesuit failure arrives as the latest in a long line of somewhat annoying problems that have beset the Endeavour on its supply mission to the orbiting International Space Station (ISS).

Hamstrung by delays, technical glitches, and persistently poor weather ahead of launch, and suffering foam debris damage from the large external fuel tank during blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center, the Endeavour astronauts arrived at the ISS only to find themselves tasked with fixing a faulty toilet system.

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