Starting the week with a long class on EMU maintenance operations.
The EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit) is the US pressure suit for spacewalks. It’s like a little spaceship that you wear on yourself and keeps you alive for 7-8 hours in vacuum.
The suit has oxygen tanks that provide you with oxygen to breath and to keep the internal pressure at about 4.3 PSI. It also keeps you cool thanks to a sublimator that gets rid of excess heat. And of course it provides communication and protection against micrometeorite strikes and radiation.
There are periodic maintenance operations that are carried out on orbit and we will start learning about those in today’s class. Sometimes there might also be the necessity to perform troubleshooting. That has been the case in recent weeks after the water leak problem in Luca Parmitano ‘s suit last month. In the picture you can see Chris Cassidy busy with some of that troubleshooting work!
12/08/2013