Cosmonaut’s Spacesuit Malfunctions

“Drop everything and start going back right away,” such was the message from Moscow ground-control to cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev just a few hours into what was to have been a seven-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS).

Despite subsequent claims that Artemyev was never in any danger, flight-controllers deemed anomalous voltage-fluctuations of the battery-pack that powered his Russian-made, Orlan spacesuit sufficiently concerning to urgently order the seven-time spacewalk veteran to return to the station’s Poisk airlock and connect his suit to ISS power.

In an instance evocative of astronaut Edward H. White’s reluctance to reenter the Gemini IV capsule after becoming the first American to walk in space—Artemyev returned to the airlock only after having been repeatedly so ordered by Russian flight-controllers.

Cosmonaut Denis Matveev, a three-time spacewalker with whom Artemyev was installing a pair of cameras on a robotic arm affixed to the station’s Russian-controlled module, remained outside the airlock for more than an hour while flight controllers troubleshot Artemyev’s spacesuit before ultimately deciding to end the spacewalk entirely.

During a subsequent livestream, a Russian translator reported that Artemyev—upon safely reentering the ISS—had jokingly assured flight controllers that he felt better than he had when he departed the station.

Spacewalks are regular occurrences on the ISS. Astronauts and cosmonauts routinely exit the orbiting behemoth to conduct equipment upgrades, perform routine maintenance and set up and monitor scientific experiments. More than 250 spacewalks have been conducted since the station entered service about two decades ago, and they typically go off without a hitch—but not this time.

Spacesuits are complex, fiddly contrivances. NASA’s next-generation spacesuits are being designed with considerable private-sector input, and promise to depart radically from the bulky Michelin-Man motif ingrained in the contemporary psyche. The semi-rigid, one-piece Orlan suit has been a staple of the Russian space program since its first use during a December 1977 spacewalk outside the Soviet Salyut-6 space station. Over the intervening decades, iterations of the suit have been used by American, European, Canadian, and Chinese spacefarers. On 03 February 2006, SuitSat-1, a retired Orlan spacesuit fitted with a radio transmitter, was launched into orbit from the International Space Station.

FMI: www.nasa.gov