NASA will resume spacewalks to the ISS in 2025 after frightening leaks in spacesuits

After a months-long break, NASA astronauts are ready to leave the International Space Station (ISS) again and do some orbital work.

NASA plans to resume spacewalks in 2025 after a spacesuit leak forced the agency to halt its extraspace activities in June to fix the problem. During a press conference earlier this week, Bill Spetch, operations and integration manager for NASA's ISS program, told reporters that NASA is planning its next spacewalks “early next year,” Space.com reported.

“It just depends on when the time is right,” Spetch is quoted as saying. According to Spetch, NASA replaced a gasket and umbilical cord connecting the spacesuit to the ISS, and the leaking spacesuit was successfully repressurized.

Hopefully this solves the problem, which could pose a life-threatening danger to space astronauts. In June, two NASA astronauts prepared to leave the ISS for a spacewalk, but it was abruptly aborted due to a water leak in the utility and cooling supply unit on astronaut Tracy Dyson's spacesuit. “There’s water everywhere,” Dyson was heard saying during the live broadcast from the ISS.

Unfortunately, NASA's leaky spacesuits on the ISS are a recurring theme. In May 2022, NASA suspended spacewalks outside the ISS after a series of potentially life-threatening incidents involving water entering astronauts' helmets during their spacewalks. NASA astronaut Raja Chari and European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer were installing hoses on a jet valve module outside the space station on March 23, 2022, when Maurer – venturing out on his first spacewalk – noticed some water and moisture in his visor at the end of the seven-hour spacewalk.

In early 2013, ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano noticed a water leak in his helmet, forcing him to abruptly abort the spacewalk. Parmitano was able to re-enter the ISS airlock, but had difficulty breathing because 1.5 liters of water had built up in his helmet. “I feel it covering the sponge of my headphones and wonder if it's causing me to lose audio contact. The water also almost completely covered the front of my visor, sticking to it and blocking my vision,” Parmitano said.

The same suit Parmitano wore nearly drowned another astronaut two years later. NASA astronaut Terry Virts, donning spacesuit No. 3005, noticed free-floating water droplets and a wet absorption pad in his helmet at the end of his spacewalk.

It's clear NASA has a spacesuit problem. The astronauts' suits aboard the ISS are more than 40 years old and are quickly approaching the end of their lifespan. NASA's Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU) were first developed in the 1970s and used for its space shuttle program. Recently, NASA turned to its commercial partners to develop new spacesuits, handing over contracts to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace in June 2022 worth a total of $3.5 billion. Collins Aerospace is falling behind in its task, while Axiom debuted the new threads last year.

The spacesuits will be worn by astronauts as part of the upcoming Artemis missions to the moon, but they will also fly to the ISS beforehand and complete a test run on the ISS. For now, the astronauts will continue their spacewalk in low Earth orbit wearing the aging spacesuits, but the temporary repairs will hopefully keep them safe.