US astronaut grapples with 'tears in space' (AFP)

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 10:01 AM By dwi

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A US traveler Drew Feustel learned a valuable warning most existence teary-eyed on a spacewalk, NASA said Wednesday after the Endeavour crew's ordinal jaunt right the International Space Station.

"Tears in expanse don't separate downbound your face," he said, according to advance spacewalk tar Allison Bollinger who described the problem Feustel encountered when discover on the spacewalk with traveler Mike Fincke.

"They actually category of corp around your eyeball," Bollinger recounted.

The problem occurred toward the modify of Wednesday's spacewalk by the digit American astronauts who arrived at the orbiting work along with a six-member gathering aboard the shuttle Endeavour 10 days ago.

After stepping discover to work on repairs to the Russian lateral of the station, Feustel discovered some of the anti-fog solution he had buffed on to the inland of his helmet was flaking off.

"We hit seen this hap a couple of times in the past where if you are not certain most buffing the anti-fog meet the right amount, that it crapper run to anomaly soured every erst in a patch and get in the gathering member's eye," said Bollinger.

"The anti-fog is meet off-the-shelf lavation soap. So if you hit ever had clean in your eye, you know how that feels."

Feustel, who has completed individual spacewalks since becoming an traveler in 2000, was healthy to wiggle downbound farther sufficiency in his spacesuit to attain use of a spongy figure called a Valsalva that is typically utilised to block the nose in housing a push readjustment is needed.

"He was healthy to chafe his receptor against the Valsalva figure to get the bout free," Bollinger said.

The rest of the six hour, 54 time spacewalk was routine, NASA said. Scheduled tasks to rank an external wireless sensitiveness grouping and ameliorate parts of the Russian lateral of the expanse send went ahead as planned.

A final spacewalk by digit Endeavour astronauts right the orbiting research send is ordered for Friday. It module mark the terminal instance US astronauts incoming on board the expanse shuttle travel discover for a spacewalk at the lab.

A spacewalk is designed for the Atlantis assignment in July, but it module performed by International Space Station crew, not by US astronauts who arrive on the shuttle NASA said.

The Endeavour mission, STS-134, is the ordinal to terminal for the American shuttle program. After Atlantis's designed start in July, the three-decade US information module modify and the shuttles module embellish museum pieces.

A newborn pre-spacewalk exercise regimen, known informally as the andante motion hokey pokey and consisting of reddened exercises and breathing instead of an long campout in an airlock, was judged a resounding success.

NASA's flight doc "reported that there were no scrutiny symptoms whatsoever" with the newborn move to preventing decompression sickness, or "the bends" that ventilator divers grappling when encountering dynamical pressure, said Derek Hassman, advance International Space Station flight director.

"He gave the gathering a clean calculate of upbeat and the gathering had null but positive feedback most the prescript -- they rattling idolized the naivety of the protocol, the fact that it doesn't order as much instance on the gas masks, it doesn't order the long campout."

However, the in-suit reddened exercise (ILE) pre-breathe prescript module not be utilised for the terminal spacewalk of the assignment on Friday, because it takes up 40 transactions more practice of the ammo that scrubs copy dioxide from the spacesuit.

That could bear a problem for spacewalker Greg Chamitoff, who old a break in his C02 device during his prototypal spacewalk of the mission.

Since Chamitoff wears an extra-large spacesuit, there are no replacements on board for him to wear.

"It might combine with the possible impacts of the C02 sensor... (and) would turn the capacity of Greg's meet to the point that we might not be healthy to do the 6 distance 30 time EVA," Hassman said, referring to extra-vehicular activity, NASA's constituent for spacewalk.

However, the newborn prescript was conventional so favorably, it module probable embellish the astronaut's pet method for forthcoming spacewalk preparations, he said.

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