Hole In Suit’s Glove Ends Third SpaceWalk Early

Rick Mastracchio’s spacewalk was cut short on Wednesday after he noticed a hole in the outer layer of his glove. NASA stresses he was in no danger as the tear didn’t penetrate all the layers of the covering, the only thing protecting him from the harsh cold of space.

As a precaution, he was ordered back into the airlock as his partner quickly finished the work outside. Mastracchio saw the rip more than four hours into what was supposed to be a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk.

This was Mastracchio’s third spacewalk and he was joined by astronaut Clay Anderson, who has been living on the station since June, as they prepared a solar array on the international space station for relocation to another section at a later date.

The crew of the Endeavour is halfway through their two-week mission to the International Space Station. The astronauts have completed most of their main goals, including attaching a new truss segment to the space station and replacing a gyroscope that helps control the station’s orientation, which has been out of commission for some time.

NASA was almost done tests that would determine whether a fourth spacewalk would be necessary to fix a gouge which appeared after launch in the belly of the shuttle. On Tuesday, officials said they were cautiously optimistic such a repair wouldn’t be necessary.

A sliver of the wound, which scientists believe may have been caused by something breaking off the external fuel tank, penetrates through a pair of inch-deep thermal tiles, exposing a thin felt fabric that is the final barrier before the shuttle’s aluminum frame.

But thermal analyses have so far shown Endeavour could safely return to Earth as it is. Any repairs to the Endeavour would have to be made during the shuttle’s fourth spacewalk, scheduled for Friday. If more time is needed to prepare, NASA could bump the spacewalk to Saturday and keep the shuttle at the station longer.

Engineers are uncertain whether it was foam insulation that came off Endeavour’s external fuel tank and struck the shuttle at liftoff, as was the case for Columbia four years ago, or whether the debris was ice or a combination of materials, Shannon said.

The debris weighed less than an ounce, and was 4 inches long, almost 4 inches wide and almost 2 inches deep. It peeled away from a bracket on the tank, fell against a strut lower on the tank, then shot into the shuttle’s belly.