Spacewalkers cope with phantom menace

How a weak jet of water and a flawed contingency plan led to a communications breakdown in orbit

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5592615

By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst // Special to MSNBC

Updated: 5:19 p.m. ET Aug. 3, 2004

During an otherwise-routine spacewalk Tuesday, the international space station's astronauts were faced with a half-hour loss of communications when the station drifted out of precise orientation. The cause of these anomalies was a previously known issue with the duo's Russian spacesuits, according to internal NASA documents obtained by MSNBC.com.

Moreover, a corrective procedure that had been developed in recent weeks in anticipation of exactly such a problem turned out to be flawed, NASA sources said on condition of anonymity.

Various explanations have been given for Tuesday's glitch: Some news accounts indicated that the station’s stabilizing gyroscopes were overloaded by the crew’s strenuous work replacing equipment at the Russian end of the station. In Moscow, spokesmen for Russia's space agency blamed American stabilizers and the rough handling of the station by the two men in orbit, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke and Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka.

But according to the NASA documents, a U.S.-Russian team determined last month that the station was likely to be forced out of proper orientation by a feature of the Russian spacesuits the men were wearing. Similar drifts had been seen on earlier spacewalks, and will be again, the team concluded.