Citing debris risk, NASA delays spacewalk to fix space station antenna
Send a link to a friend
[November 30, 2021]
By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) -A spacewalk planned for Tuesday
to repair a faulty antenna on the International Space Station was
postponed indefinitely, NASA said, citing a "debris notification" it
received for the orbiting research laboratory.
Two U.S. astronauts had been scheduled to venture outside the space
station at 7:10 a.m. Eastern time (1210 GMT) to begin their work, facing
what NASA officials had called a slightly elevated risk posed by debris
from a Russian anti-satellite missile test this month.
But about five hours before the outing was to have commenced, NASA said
on Twitter that the spacewalk had been called off for the time being.
"NASA received a debris notification for the space station. Due to the
lack of opportunity to properly assess the risk it could pose to the
astronauts, teams have decided to delay the Nov. 30 spacewalk until more
information is available," the space agency tweeted.
It was not made clear how close debris had come to the space station,
orbiting about 250 miles (402 km) above the Earth, or whether it was
related to the Russian missile test.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Nov/30/images/ads/current/debbiesflora_lda_111921.png)
NASA TV had planned to provide live coverage of the 6-1/2-hour
"extravehicular activity," or EVA, operation by astronauts Thomas
Marshburn and Kayla Brown. The outing would be the fifth spacewalk for
Marshburn, 61, a medical doctor and former flight surgeon with two
previous trips to orbit, and the first for Barron, 34, a U.S. Navy
submarine officer and nuclear engineer on her debut spaceflight for
NASA.
The objective is to remove a faulty S-band radio communications antenna
assembly, now more than 20 years old, and replace it with a new spare
stowed outside the space station.
According to plans, Marshburn was to have worked with Barron while
positioned at the end of a robotic arm operated from inside the station
by German astronaut Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency, with
help from NASA crewmate Raja Chari.
[to top of second column]
|
![](../images/113021pics/news_k21.jpg)
Workers pressure wash the logo of NASA on the Vehicle Assembly
Building before SpaceX will send two NASA astronauts to the
International Space Station aboard its Falcon 9 rocket, at the
Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., May 19, 2020.
REUTERS/Joe Skipper
![](../images/ads/current/centraldirect_lda_SPONSOR_2021.png)
The four arrived at the space station Nov. 11 in a
SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule launched from the Kennedy Space Center in
Cape Canaveral, Florida, joining two Russian cosmonauts and a NASA
astronaut already aboard the orbiting outpost.
Four days later, an anti-satellite missile test conducted without
warning by Russia generated a debris field in low-Earth orbit, and
all seven crew members took shelter in their docked spaceships to
allow for a quick getaway until the immediate danger passed,
according to NASA.
The residual debris cloud from the blasted satellite has dispersed
since then, according to Dana Weigel, NASA deputy manager of the
International Space Station (ISS) program.
But NASA calculates that remaining fragments continued to pose a
"slightly elevated" background risk to the space station as a whole,
and a 7% higher risk of spacewalkers' suits being punctured, as
compared to before Russia's missile test, Weigel told reporters on
Monday.
Although NASA has yet to fully quantify additional hazards posed by
more than 1,700 larger fragments it is tracking around the station's
orbit, the 7% higher risk to spacewalkers falls "well within"
fluctuations previously seen in "the natural environment," Weigel
said.
Still, mission managers canceled several smaller maintenance tasks
under consideration for Tuesday's spacewalk, Weigel added.
(By Steve Gorman. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2021/Nov/30/images/ads/current/guzzardos_sda_HFH_2021.png) |