Water in ageing spacesuit caused problems for spacewalking astronaut

Washington: NASA`s Mission Control has revealed the root cause of the problem that prompted the early end of the latest spacewalk: Water in leading spacewalker astronaut`s 35-year-old spacesuits.

Expedition 38 Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio and his fellow astronaut Michael Hopkins had problems when they were conducting an urgent repair outside the ISS during a spacewalk that lasted five hours and 28 minutes. The spacewalk ended short of its scheduled six-and-a-half-hour time frame after Mastracchio, the lead spacewalker, said that his feet were cold during at least part of the nearly five-and-a-half-hour walk, and he at times had to re-adjust temperature controls in his suit. Even before the emergency repair mission had started, NASA had admitted that they were working with aging spacesuits that were designed in the same era of the space shuttle.