NASA suspends routine spacewalks due to leaky spacesuit helmet

Highlights After finding water in astronaut's helmet, NASA has suspended all spacewalks. Water was found in the helmet worn by European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer Maurer reported about 20 to 25 centimetres of water in a very thin layer, covering helmet's inside After finding water in an astronaut's helmet, NASA has suspended all, except the most urgent spacewalks, the agency officials have announced. Water was found in the helmet worn by European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer following a March 23 spacewalk, Space.com reported. It was specifically the quantity of water that got our attention," Dana Weigel, deputy station programme manager at NASA's Johnson Space Centre in Houston, said during a press conference this week. NASA ultimately determined that the materials intruded "because a water filtering facility at Johnson had not been managed to control for silica," NASA's Office of the Inspector General wrote in April 2017.