NASA begins to have problems supplying spacesuits for repairs

Robert Sole 6 May 2017

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NASA internal report warns that they are dangerously short of spacesuits for maintenance tasks on the International Station, because they are using suits to repair the damage of the other suits.

NASA's comptroller general has warned of a serious danger: the space agency could run out of spacesuits. The suits currently used by NASA astronauts are known as Extravehicular Mobility Suits (EMS) , which were designed in the late 70s for use on the space shuttles and for maintenance operations on the International Space Station.

According to the data of the first eighteen life-support units that were manufactured, currently only eleven units remain in service, the rest of the units being used to repair damaged units and it is possible that with the passage of time, the units that remain, being already old, have to be used to repair other units and so on until there are hardly any useful units left. On July 16, 2013 there was a great scare due to a water leak in a suit worn by Luca Parmitano that caused the cancellation of the space walk. After many, many uses, the report reported by the astronauts have caused 27 serious incidents and just over 3400 minor incidents.

NASA

It should be noted that these units should initially have had a useful life of fifteen years, but they have been in service for more than thirty years and for now, these units hold up. The report stipulates that they could run out of a sufficient number of EVA suits to continue to maintain the International Space Station until 2024 and less if the service is extended until next 2028.

Currently NASA has spent no less than $ 200 million on the design and testing of three new spacesuits, called the Constellation Space Suit System, Advanced Space Suit Project and Orion Crew Survival System, but the problem is that all these suits are far away. to enter service in a very relatively short space of time. Said reports also NASA establishes that they must move their ass and make an operational suit, which is a complex task, since to some extent they are compact spaceships.