14 DAY TRIAL // As if NASA didn't have enough problems with an already tight schedule, now another incident brings up the problem of the spacesuits the astronauts wear while on spacewalk missions. During a test in a pressure-chamber on Earth, a trainee smelled traces of smoke inside his spacesuit. So far, the source of the smoke hasn't been found, but this event threats to delay the next month's mission, when the space shuttle Atlantis should deliver Europe's Columbus space laboratory, which has at least two spacewalks scheduled.
Delays such as this one could complicate NASA's plants to finish the assembly of the International Space Stations by the end of the year 2010, but officials are hopping for a quick resolution of the mystery surrounding the Extravehicular Mobility Unit or EMU, which will preserve the current schedule. The incident which took place on Friday, was described by NASA in a brief item posted on its website on Monday. The source of the smoke seems to be the EMU unit which houses the life-support system, so the test was immediately closed and the crew member extracted without any incident.
The crewman participating in the test, was Mkhail Korniyenko, a 47-year-old Russian cosmonaut, training for a long mission on the International Space Station, next year. The trainee reported that he smelled smoke and felt heat behind his neck. During the EMU examination, NASA's experts found no traces of any combustion or contamination, posing NASA with a paradox, because this is good and bad news at the same time. The good news is that there appears to be no potential for a fatal fire, but the bad news is that the root of the incident hasn't been found yet.
Due to the immediate danger, NASA's investigation board has recommended the termination of all missions, except those on board the International Space Station, which involve using the spacesuits, until the source of the smoke will be found. NASA hopes that the incident is not related to the spacesuits design, so that spacewalks could proceed as scheduled.
In case they find indeed a problem regarding hardware problems, this would involve the replacement of the components of all the spacesuits, which could cost NASA a couple of months in delays, to fix them, unless they find a way to use the Russian spacesuits present on board the space station.
Fire hazards are especially high in spacesuits and on the space station, since they use pure oxygen at high pressure. During testings in the 1980s, a spacesuit's EMU has exploded due to a contamination in one of the lines. Fortunately, the test was conducted on an unoccupied suit, otherwise the astronaut would have been killed by the blast of the explosion. Though standards regarding the cleaning of the line should have prevented further incidents, similar discoveries have been made on spacesuits on board the space station which have caused delays in the past, by replacing and cleaning the faulty lines.
The final preparation of the Harmony module should take place sometime next week, when two spacewalks are programmed to connect the data, power and coolant lines. Once this is done, the crew on board the space station will only have ten days to go through what would typically be a fifteen day activation process, to prepare for the installation of the Columbus module.
Analysis on the gas sample extracted from the spacesuit and the gas filters, showed that there in no indication of combustion products. NASA expects to decide by Thursday whether to clear the suits for mission or not, depending on the final results of the analysis.
Experts have planed to remove and inspect the carbon dioxide scrubber inside the EMU, to see if that was the source of the smell. The memo report released has no record of the claim that the astronaut actually felt the warm sensation on the back of his neck, since it very well could have been only a sensation triggered by stress.