NASA Space Station (Photo : www.dailymail.co.uk)
NASA will delay three scheduled spacewalks by astronauts at the International Space Station because it needs more time to analyze a faulty spacesuit. The problems with this spacesuit resemble the problems of a spacesuit in 2013 that almost drowned an astronaut who was on a spacewalk.
The problem then was a faulty fan pump separator that's a technical part of the suit's temperature system. If the fan fails, an astronaut wearing it needs to return to the ISS.
NASA engineers need to fix the two critical fans and pump units that failed recently. It was found that water seeped into the bearings that corroded and seized.
The faulty units were sent back to Earth on a Dragon capsule last week. The spacesuits to be used for the spacewalks checked out fine.
Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts are the astronauts designated for the extra vehicular activity.
Their three spacewalks have been rescheduled for Saturday, Feb. 21; Wednesday, Feb. 25 and Sunday, March 1. They will be conducted to prepare the ISS for the inclusion of new docking ports for planned U.S. commercial spacecraft scheduled to take to space by 2017.
Space X and Boeing are working on the crew capsules. They will also ferry the astronauts going to and from the NASA space station, ABC News reported.
