{"id":801390,"date":"2026-03-27T08:07:35","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T13:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=801390"},"modified":"2026-03-27T08:07:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T13:07:35","slug":"i-almost-drowned-in-space-when-my-helmet-filled-with-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=801390","title":{"rendered":"I almost drowned in space when my helmet filled with water"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Luca Parmitano during a spacewalk on 9 July 2013<\/p>\n

ESA\/NASA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

When the water reached my face, it spread over my nose and up into my nostrils in an instant. I was almost blinded, I couldn\u2019t hear anything and I couldn\u2019t breathe through my nose. I already knew I needed to reach the airlock and get back inside the International Space Station. The key question: how long did I have before the water reached my mouth and I couldn\u2019t breathe at all?<\/p>\n

When you go on a spacewalk, you enter a new world. It\u2019s an incredibly privileged perspective. Inside the ISS and looking through the windows of the cupola, you\u2019re still inhabiting the safe world of the space station. It\u2019s like staring into a large and really beautiful aquarium. But when I leave the ISS for a spacewalk, I am immersed in the void. I\u2019m in an environment that doesn\u2019t need me. If I wasn\u2019t inside my spacesuit, I would be dead within minutes.<\/p>\n

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The infinite horizon of stars and blackness is so vivid. On one of my spacewalks, I was being moved from one side of the space station to the other on a robotic arm. I was attached to the arm by my feet. I had no frame of reference because the space station was behind me, Earth was behind me. And for the first time in my life, I perceived the three-dimensionality of space. Maybe it was because I was drawing on my knowledge of astrophysics, but I felt I could see this sponge-like tissue of bubbles or voids surrounded by all these massive light sources. Since then, I\u2019ve tried to relive that moment. But I haven\u2019t been able to do it.<\/p>\n

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It was during Luca Parmitano\u2019s second spacewalk on 16 July 2013 when disaster struck<\/p>\n

NASA Johnson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve done six spacewalks so far. The water leak was during my second, on 16 July 2013. It was uncomfortable, for sure, when I first felt the cold fluid on the back of my head. But then, obviously, I still went through the standard procedure. I called the ground: \u201cHey, I feel water in the back of my helmet, FYI \u2013 for your information.\u201d The \u201cFYI\u201d was me saying: I\u2019m still good and I\u2019m still ready to continue with the spacewalk.<\/p>\n

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I was told to await instructions. Then they asked if I knew where the water was coming from. I didn\u2019t. But by then, I could feel it was accumulating. Water behaves differently when you take away the effects of gravity. Capillarity works really well to move it from one place to another across a surface.<\/p>\n

A lot of people, when they think of a spacesuit, they\u2019re imagining movies like Gravity<\/em> or The Martian<\/em>. The helmets in those movies are really big. You\u2019ve paid $100 million to have a specific actor, so you need a big helmet to see their face. Nobody wants to see my face, so our helmets are relatively small. There isn\u2019t much space between the helmet and my face. The water was flowing in this small space, and it filled up relatively fast. After my ears became blocked, I couldn\u2019t hear much, and I also began to realise that the people on the ground couldn\u2019t hear me either.<\/p>\n

Then the sun set. When you\u2019re flying around Earth, you have a sunset and sunrise every 45 minutes. A spacewalk lasts about six to seven hours, so a lot of it is done at night. The sunset was a complicating factor. I could see what I had directly in front of me even despite the water, because of the illumination from the lights on my helmet. But the moment I tried to look further away, I couldn\u2019t make anything out. I couldn\u2019t focus on distant objects with the water in front of my eyes.<\/p>\n

I still didn\u2019t know where the water was coming from. But in that moment, it wasn\u2019t important. What was important was that I had this ticking timer telling me to act. I might have 10 minutes left. Or 5 minutes. Or even just 1 minute. I couldn\u2019t control that, but I could control my behaviour.<\/p>\n

Before becoming an astronaut, I was a pilot, then I became a fighter pilot, then a test pilot. I learned on day one of flight school that there are three actions to take in an emergency: I maintain control, I analyse the situation, and I take the proper action.<\/p>\n

The proper action was to find my way back to the airlock. The next step was to work out how to do that. There are handles on the outside of the space station that help us move around. I knew I could use those to reach the airlock. I asked myself: can I see the next handle? I can\u2019t see it, it\u2019s too far away. Can I figure out where it is by reaching and feeling with my hand? I can. Following my tether, anchored to the airlock, I can begin moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n

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Luca Parmitano\u2019s spacesuit began filling with water again during a test after his abandoned spacewalk<\/p>\n

NASA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

But moving in a spacesuit is harder than you probably think it would be. The suit is pressurised and that pressure is a force reacting against your muscles. To move, you have to fight that force. And your hands and fingers, there are no strong muscles there. So every time you want to hold an object, like a handle, the forces are so strong it feels like you\u2019re having to squeeze a tennis ball.<\/p>\n

That last part of the spacewalk felt like a very long time, an eternity. My mind slowed everything down. In reality, it was only 7 minutes before I was back in the airlock. In those 7 minutes, they couldn\u2019t hear me on the ground and they didn\u2019t know how I was doing. But I later found out that they didn\u2019t realise I was in trouble because my heart rate never changed. It stayed steady. I controlled my response.<\/p>\n

I can still relive that spacewalk, but it\u2019s not constantly in my head. It\u2019s not something that changed me, although it did change us all operationally. We discovered that a blocked filter caused the failure, so we changed our procedures to look for that before spacewalks. We also added a snorkel to the spacesuits, so if the helmet fills with water, we can use the snorkel to breathe from the air in the body chamber. So this event is never going to happen again. That\u2019s the silver lining.<\/p>\n

I would never disagree with somebody saying what astronauts do is extraordinary. What we are able to do is<\/em> extraordinary. But that doesn\u2019t make us extraordinary people. It makes us normal people who have the training to do an extraordinary job.<\/p>\n

As told to Colin Barras<\/em><\/p>\n

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