[katieHaylor (OP)]

Mike says:

What would happen to a human body if a spacesuit malfunctioned?

What do you think?

[evan_au]

It depends totally on the type of malfunction.
- For failure modes that could be life-threatening, several layers of protection are built-in.
- For more minor failure modes, the goal is to get back inside before they become life-threatening.
- A space suit will not protect you from a speck of dust traveling at 10km/second. So during meteor showers (which mostly consist of specks of dust), the astronauts retreat inside their escape capsule.

And for others, they learn from experience.
- Astronaut Chris Hadfield had a problem where an eye irritation caused his eyes to water, and this built up around his eyes, so he basically went blind.
- As a result of this, they changed the liquid used to clean the inside of the helmet.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_suit

[PmbPhy]

Mike says:

What would happen to a human body if a spacesuit malfunctioned?

What do you think?

As Evan said, it depends. It can be life threatening. In fact this actually happened, i.e. an accident which nearly cost the life of an astronaut. On Aug. 27, 2013 an astronaut on a space walk nearly drowned when there was a leak in his spacesuit. Water can't fall down like it does here on Earth. It will collect in an area, in this case around his head. It could have been avoided though.

For details see: https://www.space.com/24835-spacesuit-water-leak-nasa-investigation.html