NASA Takes a Week To Admit EVA Issues

NASA: No canisters — no spacewalks, Reuters

“Lost chemical canisters and some suspect handrails will prevent astronauts on the international space station from doing any spacewalking in the near future, a NASA manager said on Wednesday.”

ISS spacewalks on hold, Orlando Sentinel

“The issues are nothing new. Both have been known to NASA officials for some time and were mentioned in an internal ISS status report posted last week on SpaceRef.com.”

Editor’s note: Gee, it sure took a while for NASA to admit this – given that this situation was reported on NASA Watch/SpaceRef a week ago:

NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 15 March 2006

“Both the Russian segment (RS) and the US segment (USOS) are currently “No Go” for EVA (extravehicular activity): the RS side is still missing four Orlan LiOH (lithium hydroxide) CO2 absorption canisters; on the US side, of surface blisters observed on “dogbone”-type EVA handrails on ground units which may also be present on orbit.[For the LiOH cans, additional crew time will be allocated for the search. On the handrails, an ongoing metallurgy analysis/testing (tensile, fracture, sheer) will be completed prior to a spacewalk if a contingency arose).]”