A Russian spacewalk outside the International Space Station ended ahead of schedule on Wednesday, US and Russian officials said, after an astronaut discovered an electrical problem in his suit.
Oleg Artemyev spent nearly two hours on a spacewalk scheduled for six hours, when voltage levels in his suit’s battery began to drop unexpectedly, prompting flight controllers in Moscow to repeatedly order him to return immediately to the station’s airlock.
In a live audio broadcast, the flight controller told Artemyev from the mission control center in Moscow: “Oleg. Leave everything and come back. Leave everything and start returning immediately. Go back and connect (suit to) power to the station.”
Artemyev returned to the airlock and connected his suit to a power source.
The observer warned Artemyev that he would risk cutting off power to the oxygen pump in his suit, as well as calling the control center, if he did not immediately return to the airlock for power.
But NASA spokesman Rob Navias said Artemyev was “not in any danger at all”.
The Russian control team chose to end the mission after the other cosmonaut Denis Matveev collected his tools and returned the robotic arm they were about to upgrade to normal.
With Matveev’s return, the spacewalk will have taken 4 hours.
And the spacewalk mission, Wednesday, bears the number 252 in the history of the station, and it was intended to install cameras and make modifications to the arm of a European robot installed on the Russian “Noka” research unit, which will be used to transport equipment remotely outside the station.
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