July 16, 2013: Luca Parmitano risked his life

Reality is sometimes more compelling than fiction: this is what happened on July 16, 2013, when Italian ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano literally nearly drowned during a spacewalk due to a loss in his spacesuit that brought his helmet fill with 1.5 liters of water.

An episode so iconic and dramatic that it is about to become a documentary film: it is called "EVA 23" from the name of the ExtraVeicular Activity in question, and we will be able to see it from 14 July.

What happened was told by Luca Parmitano himself over and over again both on his blog and in the numerous interviews he released (on this page we report the one released by the Italian Space Agency). On July 16, 2013 Luca planned the second extravehicular activity of the Volare mission. After about 30 minutes the water began to fill the pressurized helmet, first wetting the back of his neck, then reaching his ears, so much so that it was difficult to hear the communications from the Control Center. Within minutes he reached a level that risked preventing Luca from breathing and seeing around him.

"The upper part of the helmet is now full of water, and I don't even know if the next time I breathe through my mouth I will be able to fill my lungs with air and not with liquid. I realize that I am not even able to understand in what direction to go to return to the airlock. I can only see for a few tens of centimeters around me, and I cannot identify the handles we hold onto to move around the ISS. "

The technical explanation of the incident was included in 222 pages of the official report, in which we read that the problem was originated by a failure of a mechanical valve, which prevented the water from circulating properly by channeling it into the air circuit. A problem that gave the first signs already in Luca's first extravehicular activity, the EVA 22 a few days earlier, and which was mistakenly attributed to the water reserve bag. Replaced the bag, the astronaut reused the suit for the second time.

In EVA 23 not only did the problem recur, but it risked losing the astronaut's life. In those dramatic moments, not even the control center thought of a valve failure, or the fact that water in weightless conditions would have enveloped the astronaut's brim. The physics of liquids in space is known, but it was not applied to that particular circumstance. Not knowing how to handle the emergency, the only order that came to Parmitano was to re-enter the ISS.