Working Against the Clock, Astronauts Conduct Spacewalk

Tim Peake, who on the mission became the first astronaut from Britain to walk in space, and US astronaut Tim Kopra, had finished the primary goal of their outing when Kopra reported a water bubble had formed in his helmet.

In 2013, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano experienced a severe water leak that caused one of the scariest close calls in the spacewalk history.

Kopra reported that the water in his helmet was cold, and Navias said that was a clue that the leak had something to do with the water-circulating cooling loop inside the suit.

Major Tim Peake has been waiting for five years for the chance to spacewalk and today he will finally don his space suit and head out of the hatch of the International Space Station.

The water was discovered about four hours into the spacewalk. There was a brief moment of concern when a sensor on Kopra’s spacesuit failed, setting of the carbon dioxide alarm.

Flight director Royce Renfrew said that though the two Tims were not in danger due to water bubble in the helmet of Tim Kopra, NASA suspended the spacewalk as a precautionary measure. This means the astronauts had to fix the regulator within about 30 minutes while the ISS was in the shadow of the Earth.

“Great to see the Union flag out there”, Mr Kelly said.

Parmitano’s spacewalking partner that day, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy, rushed into Mission Control and offered assistance Friday, as soon as he learned what happened to Peake.

Peake, a helicopter pilot chosen by the European Space Agency, is Britain’s first official astronaut. “We have spent many hours working in our spacesuits, “floating” in the largest swimming pool on Earth with a Space Station mockup”, he wrote in a blog post.

In this case, the astronauts will work to fix a power unit outside the Station. All the best”, tweeted former Beatle Paul McCartney while Prime Minister Cameron said: “Good luck to @astro_timpeake on today’s space walk.

As the first British person to reach the ISS – following the first British citizen in space, Helen Sharman, who flew to the Russian Mir space station in 1991 – Peake has drawn plenty of attention from his compatriots.