On July 16, astronaut Luca Parmitano started a “spacewalk”, an extravehicular activity (EVA) outside the International Space Station along with his colleague Chris Cassidy to carry out some maintenance and repair. The operation was to last about six and a half hours but after less than two hours it was interrupted because water was pouring into Parmitano’s spacesuit’s helmet. Now more details have been released about this problem.

About an hour after the start of the spacewalk, Luca Parmitano noticed some water in his helmet. Initially, the problem wasn’t considered serious because the amount of water was reduced but with each passing minute its amount increased. The situation was rapidly becoming dangerous and Mission Control decided to abort the EVA.

The return to the International Space Station was difficult because at that point Luca Parmitano was practically blinded by the water and had to be careful not to breathe it because having a coughing fit while wearing a spacesuit is not a trivial problem. In space you can’t just run so Parmitano, even with the help of his colleague Chris Cassidy, took a while to go back into the ISS.

The first hypothesis on the origin of the problem was that the drinking water was leaking from the small tank in the space suit. The investigation started immediately after the return of Luca Parmitano, however, has allowed to establish that the water used to cool the suit had penetrated into the ventilation system of the helmet.

Over a liter of water entered Luca Parmitano’s helmet and at the end the risk to his safety was serious. In the microgravity environment of the International Space Station water tends to coalesce into drops and balls that tend to stick to the surfaces they come into contact with. There was even a risk that Parmitano could choke.

A few days ago a Progress spaceship brought to the International Space Station a special repair kit that should help the astronauts to pinpoint the fault in Luca Parmitano’s spacesuit. Luckily, the abourted operation wasn’t urgent so they can take their time for the repair before scheduling a new date to resume the task and a Russian spacesuit can be used by Parmitano if the American one isn’t satisfactorily repaired.

Luca Parmitano and his colleagues are trained to deal with emergency situations and keeping their nerve the Italian astronaut suffered no damage to his health. His misfortune, however, reminds us that in space a trivial problem such as a water leak can be potentially fatal.

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