Spacewalk aborted after coolant leak: “There’s literally water everywhere”

Floating in the International Space Station’s space-lock module, astronauts Tracy Dyson and Mike Barratt were preparing to head out Monday to end a spacewalk that was terminated June 13 when Dyson reported a large water leak from to his spacesuit’s cooling system, saying “there’s literally. water everywhere.”

The leak was stopped when Dyson reconnected the hub that supplies the station’s power, cooling water and oxygen. The airlock was depressed, its inner hatch was opened and astronauts they moved into the inner airlock where their crewmates were standing by to help them out of their giant spacesuits.

NASA said Dyson and Barratt were never in any danger.

The leak began shortly after the crew switched their spacesuit to battery power at 8:46 a.m. EDT to officially begin the planned six-and-a-half-hour flight. Shortly after switching to battery power, the coolant in the Dyson suit began to leak.

“Oh, my God,” Dyson said as he saw the water coming out.

“Oh, wow,” Barratt agreed.

“Water is coming out of my SCU (service and cooling unit), man,” Dyson told the air traffic controllers. The hub supplies cooling water, oxygen and electrical power until the operator disconnects the outlet from the airlock.

“There’s a lot of water flowing,” Dyson said, moments later adding, “there’s water everywhere. … I’ve got ice all over my helmet.”

The hubs were reset and the leak stopped. After closing the outer part of the airlock, the chamber was repressurized so that the astronauts could return to the station.

Although they never floated outside, Dyson and Barratt were allowed to walk for 31 minutes. That’s the time between switching their spacesuits to internal batteries and reconnecting them to the station’s power.

Barratt already held the record for the shortest spacewalk on record, 12 minutes in a vacuum inside the Russian part of the station in 2009 when he and astronaut Gennady Padalka installed a dock instead of a hatch.

That record still stands.

“And Mike, you already have the shortest EVA that I know of, but this one doesn’t count today. So your old record still stands,” astronaut Steve Bowen announced from mission control.

“Good,” Barratt laughed. “To warn, it was the shortest – and most successful – EVA on record.”

Dyson has now logged four spacewalks totaling 23 hours and 20 minutes while Barratt’s total in three EVAs stands at five hours and 37 minutes. Total spacewalk time through 271 EVAs is a total of 1,715 hours and 56 minutes , or 71 days 11 hours 56 minutes.

It was the second consecutive space flight to be terminated before the astronauts left orbit.

Dyson and astronaut Matthew Dominick originally planned to make the expedition on June 13, but the spacewalk was called off after Dominick reported a “disturbance issue.” No details were provided.

Dyson and Barratt had already been penciled in for a second space flight, or EVA, and NASA administrators decided to keep the same lineup for Monday’s iteration.

The departure objectives were to retrieve the radio transmitter and antenna package, known as the radio frequency group, or RFG, which had defied two previous attempts to remove it from the storage platform.

Dyson also planned to clear several targeted areas near the US space station’s air barrier and a few air vents in an effort to collect samples of tiny organisms that could survive the extreme heat, radiation and vacuum of open space.

If researchers find such organisms after the samples are returned to Earth, it will help engineers devise ways to prevent similar biological contamination on Mars during future missions to the red planet.

If the spaceflight goes well, NASA plans to schedule another EVA on July 2. It is not yet known how the water leak issue may affect the spaceflight schedule or what will need to be done to fix the problem.