After 4 months of shutdown, this essential ISS program will restart

© NASA

Last June, the American space agency ( NASA) got a big scare. During an EVA, an extra-vehicular activity, two astronauts, in the vacuum of space, experienced one of the most stressful moments of their lives. Tracy Dyson had notably commented on the situation live on NASA's feed, exclaiming, “There's water everywhere.”

< p>His suit suffered from a leak in its water circuit as well as a problem with its cooling unit. Although the problem is impressive, NASA is not new to this. The American space agency has already faced suits with leaks in April 2022.

Recurring accidents

Astronauts Raja Chari and German Matthias Maurer notably had the bitter experience of a water leak directly into Maurer's helmet. While on an extra-vehicular activity together to do work on the ISS, Maurer, who was on his first spacewalk, noticed water droplets and fog on his visor at the end of his spacewalk.

The mission was then aborted as quickly as possible, as was already the case in 2013 for NASA astronaut Luca Parmitano. He too had suffered a leak in his water circuit at head level. These leaks, although very slight, can have catastrophic consequences for astronauts.

In a completely watertight suit, where movements are very complicated, a water leak can, in the worst case, cause the astronaut to drown. In the 2013 incident with Luca Parmitano, nearly 1.5 liters of water were found in his helmet. A huge amount, so much so that Parmitano had difficulty breathing.

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Old suits

These incidents, which are far from being the only ones, demonstrate one thing: NASA's space suits are too worn out. Used for almost 40 years, it is urgent to replace them to avoid problems of this type. A space suit is not, contrary to the collective imagination, a sort of padded white exoskeleton, which blocks astronauts like knights in armor.

It is above all a technological jewel, capable of recreating atmospheric pressure in the vacuum of space. The suit is the last bastion for the astronaut with the vacuum. Without a suit, his survival depends only on a few seconds. Thanks to it, he can spend hours working outside the ISS, in a unique environment.

But to do this, the suit must constantly fight against 3 scourges. The first is the difference in pressure. The second concerns the cooling of the suit. With a body at 37°C inside, it could quickly become a furnace.

Finally, the last important point in the design of a suit concerns resistance to UV rays and other solar radiation. Much more important in space than on Earth, these rays can be fatal in the long term, facilitating the development of cancers and other diseases of this type.

New suits are coming

Aware of the problem with its suits, built in the 70s, NASA has placed an order with 2 private manufacturers to have new suits. The company Axiom recently presented its future suit, built in collaboration with the luxury house Prada.

For its part, Collins Aerospace, which received $1.75 billion to build these suits, has still not delivered a single one to the American space agency. However, the latter would like to test the suits in the ISS before using them on the Moon, when it returns to our satellite in 2026.

In the meantime, NASA assures that it has solved the problem on its old space suits. New spacewalks are planned for early 2025.

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