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Spacewalkers Hustled Back in Station When Oxygen Tank Pressure Drops

Posted on: Friday, 25 June 2004, 06:00 CDT

Spacewalkers hustled back in station when oxygen tank pressure drops

Their risky mission to fix gyroscope circuit breaker is called off

By MARCIA DUNN Associated Press

Friday, June 25, 2004

Cape Canaveral, Fla. -- Two spacewalkers who stepped out of the International Space Station for an unusually risky job were quickly ordered back in Thursday when Mission Control spotted a pressure drop in one of the men's oxygen tanks.

NASA stressed that the spacemen were not in any danger. They were safely in the pressurized confines of the orbiting complex within minutes.

Astronaut Mike Fincke had just popped open the hatch and floated outside on a repair job when the frightening words came from Russian Mission Control: "You need to return. Something is not right."

Mission Control informed Fincke and cosmonaut Gennady Padalka -- both wearing an odd mishmash of U.S. and Russian gear -- that the pressure in Fincke's prime oxygen bottle was falling rapidly. They needed to get back inside, fast, and close the hatch.

The spacemen sealed the hatch 14 minutes and 22 seconds after opening it and repressurized the Russian air lock.

Nearly one hour after the spacewalk began, both crewmen were instructed to take off their spacesuits. The spacewalk was put off until next Tuesday at the earliest.

"Misha, how are you feeling?" Mission Control asked Fincke, using the Russian name for Michael.

"I feel fine," the astronaut replied.

NASA said the suit pressure itself never faltered and that the problem was confined to the oxygen tank.

Fincke and Padalka were using an improvised combination of both of their countries' gear on a mission to replace a fried circuit breaker. A new breaker is needed to restore power to one of the gyroscopes that help keep the station stable and pointed in the right direction.

The mission was fraught with risk, even before Thursday night's suit trouble.

NASA has been bending its own rules to keep the space station operating since the grounding of the shuttle fleet following last year's Columbia catastrophe. The grounding has all but stopped the delivery of replacement parts and reduced the size of the station crew from three to two.

As a result, NASA had to leave the space station empty during a spacewalk for only the second time ever, forcing flight controllers on the ground to keep an eye on the outpost's systems.

The crewmen had originally planned on leaving from the American hatch in U.S. spacesuits. But the NASA suits developed crippling cooling problems last month, forcing managers to send the two men out the Russian hatch in Russian suits.

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