Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev had to return to the station while leaving the ISS. The reason for this was a voltage fluctuation in the battery of his spacesuit. Because of this, he almost missed the opportunity to communicate with his companion.
Russian had problems with the power supply of the spacesuit
On August 17, Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev and Denis Matveev went outside the space station to work with a European robotic arm. However, some time after the start of work, the first of them reported that the voltage in the battery of his spacesuit was jumping.
This could lead to the inability to communicate with Matveev and the outside world on the radio. Therefore, the head of flights in Russia, former cosmonaut Vladimir Solovyov, gave him the command “Drop everything and come back immediately.”
So Artemyev had no choice but to return to the airlock. It seems that the icon with which he recently recorded a video against the background of the “flags” of the LPR and DPR did not help him. Matveev had to complete the work on his own.
Why did the Russians go into space?
This was the seventh spacewalk carried out from the ISS during the current year. Its goal was to place the equipment on a European robotic arm. This is the same device that the cosmonauts were forbidden to work with by the former head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin.
But after his dismissal, the installations obviously changed and the Russian cosmonauts have already made several exits to adjust the robotic arm. Before Artemyev had problems with the power supply, he and Matveev managed to install two cameras on the “elbow” sections. They also managed to remove the thermal insulation from the two end effectors.
But they failed to move the external control panel by hand from one work area to another and test the rigidity mechanism that will be used to facilitate the capture of the payload. Now these goals will be postponed until the upcoming spacewalk.
According to www.space.com
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