NASA space suits

A "first" spacewalk with two women was cancelled because NASA didn't have 2 space suits available.

Never mind the desperate scratching about for newsworthy activities; think about that space suit issue. It turns out to be just a symptom.

Did you miss this story too? A space suit almost drowned an astronaut back in 2014. Once back inside the airlock, Parmitano and the other space station crewmembers found that about 1.5 liters of water filled the helmet.

The space suits are kind of old.

A 2017 NASA report on space suits

The spacesuits NASA astronauts currently use on the International Space Station (ISS or Station) – known as Extravehicular Mobility Units (EMU) – were developed more than 40 years ago and have far outlasted their original 15-year design life.

NASA continues to manage an array of design and health risks associated with the EMUs used by ISS crew. In addition, only 11 of the 18 original EMU Primary Life Support System units – a backpack-like structure that performs a variety of functions required to keep an astronaut alive during a spacewalk – are still in use, raising concerns that the inventory may not be adequate to last through the planned retirement of the ISS.

The Martian rovers lasted well past their promised lifespan (though I understand that the engineers low-balled their lifetime estimates to be on the safe side), but there were plenty of glitches along the way that needed to be fixed remotely. "Hey Dan, can you hang on to the strut for a bit while we download a firmware fix for your propulsion control unit?"