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NASA postponed a spacewalk on Tuesday after one of the astronauts due to his work outside the International Space Station had a “pinched nerve” in his neck.
US astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Japanese Akihiko Hoshide were hoping to step out into the void at 12:30 UTC on August 24. The two were instructed to install equipment along the spacecraft’s integrated truss structure, the 108.5-meter-long pole that runs the full length of the ISS, to support the panels. upgraded solar panels for the station.
But, alas, Vande Hei suffered from a pinched nerve, which thwarted NASA’s plans. “This problem is not a medical emergency,” the US agency confirmed. “The spacewalk is not time sensitive and the crew members continue to move forward with other station work and activities.”
It is not known when the spacewalk will be rescheduled; NASA has said it will have to wait until after next week, when the crew are expected to receive supplies in a SpaceX cargo capsule on August 28.
“Thank you for everyone’s interest,” Vande Hei, retired US Army Colonel and Assistant Professor of Physics at West Point, noted on Twitter. “I have a nerve stuck in my neck that forced us to reschedule today’s spacewalk… Today just wasn’t a good day.”
Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrovnik, who will venture outside the ISS on September 3-6 to commission the newly arrived Nauka module, are also on board the space station.
The Nauka module docked on July 29 and made a grand entrance. Three hours after arriving, a software error, the Russians said, caused an unexpected fire in its engines, spinning the space lab over one and a half times. Fortunately, the rotation took place very slowly and no one on board was injured. The ISS corrected its orientation shortly thereafter. ®
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