Luca Parmitano and Chris Cassidy explain what happened during EVA 23

tl; dw - Luca almost drown in his spacesuit...but he didn't.

Water does some freaky stuff in space. Apparently, some of that freaky behavior edges toward being deadly to astronauts.

In this case, Luca Parmitano was on an extra-vehicular activity (EVA - a thing most folks might call a spacewalk) and had a small water leak into the air flow refreshing the air into his spacesuit's helmet. (Skip to 2:45 to get the explanation from astronaut Chris Cassidy) The small leak began to build up behind the plastic shield behind his head. When the water built up enough, it started to leak around the plastic shield and touched his snoopy cap. I guess the snoopy cap is hydrophilic, because the water then quickly headed forward, covering his head, filling his ears, and eventually drenching his eyes.

The next stop for the water would have been to cover and fill his mouth, leading nicely to - as all involved feared - death...in space...from drowning.

Turns out water's IMFs really matter because the molecules hold together well enough that they're hard to get off of a head in space without hands or towels - both well on the outside of the helmet.

I did appreciate seeing (at 1:30) the other astronauts (Russian, American, everybody on the ISS) at the ready to help save Luca once he got back into the airlock.

Plus seeing Karen Nyberg's hair in space is just outstanding.