Anunprecedented spacewalk for the crew of the International Space Station (ISS)was cut stunningly short - just minutes after it began - when space suitproblems arose as the first astronaut set foot outside the station.

Expedition9 flight engineer Michael Fincke had only been outside the ISS for mere momentswhen Russian mission controllers detected an unexpected pressure drop in hisspace suit's primary oxygen bottle.

Both Finckeand Expedition 9 commander Gennady Padalka were ordered back inside the spacestation, where they doffed their space suits, worked with flight controllers totrack down the problem in Fincke's suit, then eventually reopened the innerhatch and began returning the ISS to flight operations.

Totalelapsed spacewalk time: 14 minutes, 20 seconds.

"How'dyou like my EVA," Fincke joked with Houston spacecraft communicator DanBurbank after the spacewalk attempt. The brief EVA marked his first forayoutside the safety of a spacecraft above Earth.

Burbanktold Fincke he may have set a record for the shortest EVA, and welcomed himinto the ranks of seasoned spacewalkers, complete with malfunction.

"Icould have done with out the malfunction, but I'm getting serious now,"Fincke said. "You can't call me a rookie."

John Curry,NASA's ISS EVA flight director, told the Houston mission control team membersthat the spacewalk could be rescheduled for no earlier than June 29 andencouraged them to begin returning the ISS to crewed operations. The spacestation had been locked down for unmanned flight in preparation for theExpedition 9 spacewalk.

A promising start

Up untilFincke's suit problem became apparent, the spacewalk appeared to be going well.

TheExpedition 9 crew awoke early, eager to start their repair mission, and flawlesslyprepared the ISS for uncrewed operation. That process, pioneered by theExpedition 8 crew four months earlier, puts the station in a safe mode while itis empty during a spacewalk.

At 5:56p.m. EDT (2156 GMT), just six minutes behind schedule, Fincke and Padalkaopened the outer hatch of the Pirs compartment and Fincke took his first stepsin space. It was then that Russian controllers noticed the drop in Fincke'smain oxygen bottle, though NASA officials added that at no time was theastronaut ever in danger of running out of air since his suit did have backupbottle.

"I'mreally grateful the Russian specialists were able to catch that leak as fast asthey did," Fincke told Houston mission controllers after the EVA attempt."We just came back in, shut the door and live to fight another day."

Padalka andFincke were expected to perform a six-hour spacewalk to replace a device thathad cut off power to one of the space station's control moment gyroscopes, alarge spinning wheel used to orient the ISS. The device, called a remote powercontrol module (RPCM), failed on April 21 just shortly after the two astronautsarrived at the station.

The spacestation is currently running with just two functioning gyroscopes, the minimumneeded to keep the ISS oriented without burning precious thruster fuel. NASAofficials have said it is vital to return power to the third gyroscope in orderto have a backup, should one of those currently in use fail. A fourth gyroscopehas failed outright and must be replaced in a future space shuttle mission.

"Wewere on a good roll there," Fincke said of his brief spacewalk. "Butwe're going to get through this yet."

Space suit woes

The EVAspace suit glitch wasn't the first for the Expedition 9 crew.

In May, theastronauts found cooling system problems in the U.S.-built space suits whichwere originally planned to be used for the spacewalk. Since the suits couldn'tbe fixed in time for the EVA, station mission controllers opted to use theRussian Orlan suits instead.

Thedecision did have its drawbacks. Instead of staging the spacewalk out of thestation's Quest airlock, where the U.S. space suits are stored, Padalka andFincke began at the Russian Pirs docking compartment, which nearly doubled thedistance between hatch and the RPCM work site.

The astronauts would have had to pull themselves across a distanceof up to 100 feet to reach the work site from their egress hatch, the longesthike to be attempted from the ISS. Because of the communications limits oftheir Orlan suits, Padalka and Fincke could also have lost contact with groundcontrollers and each other. They planned to use hand signals, if needed, and apreset communications outpost to talk to one another during the repair.

The glovesfor the Orlan suit are stiff and weren't designed to manipulate theU.S.-constructed tools to be used during the repair job. Practicing handling those tools was a keypart of a spacewalk dress rehearsal held earlier this week aboard the ISS.

The lastspacewalk mounted from the ISS - also in Orlan suits and staged from the Pirscompartment - was also cut short due to a space suit glitch.