Second Spacewalk to Repair Pump Canceled at ISS
MALVEAUX: A second spacewalk to repair the International Space Station has been delayed until tomorrow. On Saturday, astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins successfully removed a broken coolant pump, but the pump prevents equipment from overheating and needs to be replaced.</s>HOLMES: Yeah, the five-hour mission was actually cut short when Mastracchio complained of cold feet after water leaked into the spacesuit. Now, here to talk more about this is astronaut Ron Garan, joining us from Houston. You know, you've repaired that broken pump. How tough is that? You know, you've got 35-year-old space suit to blame for this, in a way. What kind of problems does that cause?</s>RON GARAN, ASTRONAUT: Well, you know, when we go out on a spacewalk, our spacesuits are really self-contained spaceships, and there is a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of things that protect us, for one thing, but they also make our job a little difficult. One of those things is the pressure in the suit itself. Everything -- every time we grab something with our hand, every time we move, we have to fight against the pressure of our suit. And those suits when you put all the tools on it and all the equipment, they could be up to 350 pounds. Now, obviously in space, they're weightless, but we're still moving that mass around and we still have to deal with that. And it really is a very fatiguing, physically fatiguing, adventure out there in space when you're on a spacewalk.</s>MALVEAUX: Ron, tell us about that, because you've actually had that experience. For those of us who couldn't even imagine what it's like, give us a sense why that is so important that you have that -- that the liquid stays out of the suit because you had the Italian astronaut nearly drowning after a space helmet filled with water. Describe why that's so important and what is it like.</s>GARAN: One of the things that we're concerned about on a spacewalk is keeping the astronauts cool, because you're doing all that work and there's nowhere for the heat to go. And, so, we have cooling systems within the spacesuit, and basically we're wearing long underwear with tubes that go through it. And in those tubes is cold water that keeps us cold. And in the case of Luca Parmitano's suit, we think -- there's not a smoking gun yet. We don't know exactly what happened, but we believe that some of the coolant, the water that was used to cool him, leaked out into the suit and ended up in the helmet. And that became a very dangerous situation.</s>HOLMES: Yeah, they put a snorkel in now in case that happens. Again, something that I wasn't aware of and a lot of people might not be, there aren't that many of these suits. It's not like you get online to Amazon and get another one.</s>GARAN: No, exactly. We have a limited number of suits on board. Right now, the crew is basically mixing and matching and making sure that Rick Mastracchio's suit is properly sized for him when he goes out the door since they're switching him to a different suit.</s>MALVEAUX: All right, Ron Garan, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. We'll be --</s>GARAN: Oh, my pleasure.</s>MALVEAUX: -- watching tomorrow, see how this all goes. Thanks, again. We're also getting new information about the situation in South Sudan and possible U.S. military involvement in helping evacuate Americans. That's up next.