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"  Astronaut Luca Parmitano was about 44 minutes into a space walk in July 2013 when he felt something that shouldn&amp;#039;t be there\u2014water inside his helmet and on the back of his head. He and partner Chris Cassidy continued their work on EVA-23 (EVA means extra-vehicular activity, which is NASA-speak for a space walk.) But shortly thereafter, water moved to Parmitano&amp;#039;s face and went up his nose, and he lost some communication with the ground. That forced the astronauts to retreat back into the International Space Station, where they found about a liter and a half of water in Parmitano&amp;#039;s helmet. As it turns out, the leak actually went back to something that went wrong at the end of the previous ISS spacewalk, EVA-22, but at that time the NASA team thought it was not that big of a problem. That misdiagnosis is one of several revelations in the first report by a committee investigating the incident, released today. &amp;quot;The reason it was not properly investigated\u2026 was that it was believed that the drink bag caused this leak,&amp;quot; Chris Hansen, chairman of the Mishap Investigation Board, said during a press conference this afternoon. The drink bag is the reservoir of water that rides in the front of a space suit. But, Hansen says, that was not the cause of Parmitano&amp;#039;s spacewalking woes. In fact, the board is still not sure what the ultimate root cause was, though they&amp;#039;ve pegged a few problems that led to the leak. Most jarringly, there was a clog in an instrument called the fan pump separator, where a buildup of aluminum silicate prevented water from flowing through the system as it was supposed to. As a result, water backed up into the space suit. But NASA doesn&amp;#039;t now just why that clog appeared. Hansen said it could be because that particular suit was producing more silicates than normal, or because one of the filters used to clean the water loops was somehow pre-contaminated. &amp;quot;The actual cause of the mechanical failure is still under investigation,&amp;quot; he said. One other reason NASA misdiagnosed the problem at the end of the previous spacewalk: Things just act differently in space. Based on training exercises and tests on the ground, astronauts and NASA techs thought that the fan pump separator would stall if so much water leaked. That&amp;#039;s why they didn&amp;#039;t react immediately, Hansen said\u2014because Parmitano&amp;#039;s fan didn&amp;#039;t stall, they figured that wasn&amp;#039;t the problem. &amp;quot;They expected the fan to stall if there was that much water, like it does on the ground\u2026 but in zero-g, water behaves differently.&amp;quot; Hansen&amp;#039;s report contains nearly 50 recommendations for NASA, including 16 the agency has pledged to address before it executes more EVAs. The tone of many of them is a little like Homeland Security&amp;#039;s motto: If you see something, say something. William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA&amp;#039;s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, told reporters that the two astronauts returned to the safety of the ISS in plenty of time, but that it&amp;#039;s hard for gung-ho folks like astronauts to know when to quit. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s tough culturally\u2026 We have a can-do attitude and sometimes press on too long.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a10167/how-a-misdiagnosis-almost-led-to-a-space-walking-disaster-16536617/>