NASA aborts spacewalk after leak into astronaut's helmet

Reuters 2013-07-16

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ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)

STORY: A spacewalk to work on the International Space Station ended abruptly on Tuesday when a water-like liquid started building up inside an Italian astronaut's helmet, NASA officials said.

U.S. astronaut Chris Cassidy and Italy's Luca Parmitano were less than an hour into a planned six-hour outing when Parmitano reported what seemed to be water inside his helmet.

"My head is really wet and I have a feeling it's increasing," Parmitano radioed to flight controllers in Houston.

Thinking it might be his drink bag leaking, Parmitano drained the bag, but in the weightless environment of space, blobs of liquid continued to collect in his helmet..

NASA called off the spacewalk just before 9 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) and Cassidy hastily cleaned up equipment while Parmitano waited in the station's airlock.

Inside the station, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg and cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Fyodor Yurchikhin took off Parmitano's he

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