| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
NASA Sparked Fire Risk While Drying Sodden Spacesuit On Station, Report Says
NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy examines a spacesuit during Expedition 36 in August 2013. Credit: NASA
Astronauts on the International Space Station “could have ignited flammable materials” on station while drying out a spacesuit that experienced a major leak during a spacewalk in July 2013, a new report reveals.
NASA Mission Control directed the Expedition 36 crew to use a vacuum cleaner to suction out the water, a procedure that inadvertently sucked up oxygen from the suit’s secondary high pressure oxygen tank, says a mishap report into the spacesuit leak incident. This “potentially hazardous risk” of electricity and pure oxygen created a fire hazard, the report added.
In a phone call with reporters yesterday (Feb. 27), report chair Chris Hansen added that the “levels of oxygen were perfectly safe” in this particular incident and that the “the risk to the crew in the end was none”, but said the incident still warranted attention in the 222-page report, which mainly deals with the spacesuit leak.
(…)
Read the rest of NASA Sparked Fire Risk While Drying Sodden Spacesuit On Station, Report Says (642 words)
© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2014. |
Permalink |
No comment |
Post tags:
Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh
Source: http://www.universetoday.com/109818/nasa-sparked-fire-risk-while-drying-sodden-spacesuit-on-station-report-says/
