Spacewalking astronauts took extra safety measures Saturday to avoid poisoning ammonia on the suit.
The spacewalk on Saturday was to rearrange the plumbing of the International Space Station but the astronauts had to be careful not to let the fridge still lie in the lines.
Victor Glover and Mike Hopkins had no problem removing old jumper cables and removing them to remove the ammonia.
But there was so much of it that Mission Control was worried that the frozen white showers might have taken its toll.
Hopkins was amazed by the amount of ammonia released into the empty space. “There’s more than I thought,” he told flight controllers.
Even though the flow of ammonia was directed away from the astronauts and the space station, Hopkins said some frozen crystals may have sent a call to his helmet.
Mission Control said it would conduct investigations as a result. The first suit survey of astronauts found nothing: “Looks clean,” Hopkins said.
NASA did not want any ammonia to enter the space station and pollute the cabinet atmosphere.
Mission Control said the astronauts had already spent enough time in sunlight to remove any ammonia residue from their suits about four hours into the spacewalk.
But Glover later complained of eye drops, saying his right eye was watering. He then quickly made sure on Mission Control that pressure seemed to help.
As soon as the ammonia pipes were emptied, the astronauts moved one of them to a more central location near NASA’s lap, in case the other end of the station was needed. The ammonia jumper cables were added years ago after a cooling system leak.
The hose work should have been completed at a spacewalk a week ago, but was canceled along with other weird works when a power upgrade took longer than expected.
Other jobs on Saturday included installing an antenna, recirculating cables and tightening connections on a European test platform.
The spacewalk began Saturday nearly an hour late. It was the sixth and final spacewalk for seven of this team between the US and Russia. All but one were managed by NASA.