Luca Parmitano: NASA Incident Report
You know what sounds like a bad way to die? Drowning. What sounds even worse? Drowning in your own space suit, while on a spacewalk. That’s what almost happened to Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano on July 16, 2013, when 1 to 1.5 liters of water made its way into his helmet. By the time he made it into the airlock he was blind and couldn’t breathe through his nose, as the blob of water had covered them.
While a report has been released on the incident, investigation is apparently still ongoing:
In summary, the causes for this mishap evolved from (1) inorganic materials causing blockage of the drum holes in the EMU water separator resulting in water spilling into the vent loop; (2) the NASA team’s lack of knowledge regarding this particular failure mode; and (3) misdiagnosis of this suit failure when it initially occurred on EVA 22.
The source of the inorganic materials blocking the water separator drum holes had not been experienced during an EVA before and is still undergoing a concurrent investigation. The results of this investigationwill ultimately lead to resolution of this issue; however, since the concurrent investigation into the source of the debris is expected to continue for many months, the MIB does not yet have the required data to determine the root causes of the contamination source, which must ultimately be determined to prevent future mishaps.
Here’s a PDF of the report, with it’s snappy and catchy title:
International Space Station (ISS) EVA Suit
Water Intrusion
High Visibility Close Call
Note that this report is seriously redacted, with a *lot* of pages, illustrations and text, simply blacked out. I don’t suppose that the obscured portions might be recoverable as has happened with previous half-assed-redacted documents, since they have *got* to have learned their lesson about such things by now… but it’d still be interesting to see what NASA wants the public to not see. My guess would be stuff that would point towards legal liability. But also obscured are things like suit schematics; what could be the problem there? It’s not like the Russians or the Chinese don’t know how to make their own space suits.