Illness keeps astronaut from spacewalk

0 Comments | USA TODAY, February, 2008 | by Traci Watson

German astronaut Hans Schlegel trained a year for a spacewalk to install a new section of the International Space Station. Instead, he'll watch from inside the station today as two colleagues do the job.

NASA officials declined to say why Schlegel, 56, was replaced by American Stanley Love, 42. The other spacewalker is American Rex Walheim. Citing medical privacy rules, NASA's John Shannon would attribute the change only to a crew illness that wasn't life-threatening.

Shannon did hint at a potential culprit: space sickness, a form of motion sickness that has dogged astronauts since the first rockets carried humans to orbit.

"It's a well-documented fact that some astronauts , post-launch ... have symptoms of motion sickness," Shannon said Saturday...