It’s not every day that you can watch two astronauts spacewalk in real time!
Last week, Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough and Flight Engineer Peggy Whitson entered their spacesuits and completed a successful spacewalk. They worked to upgrade the power system of the International Space Station (ISS).
This was the first of two spacewalks scheduled for this upgrade, and the second will occur on Friday, January 13th.
On January 6th, the NASA astronauts completed the spacewalk that lasted just over six and a half hours. They installed three new adapter plates and hooked up electrical connections for three of the six new lithium-ion batteries. The new batteries were delivered to the ISS in December.
Before each spacewalk, a series of robotic operations extracts the new batteries from a pallet. 12 older nickel-hydrogen batteries are being replaced on this mission. Three of these older batteries will remain on the truss of the ISS and will be disconnected from the power grid. Nine of these batteries will be disposed later in a cargo resupply spacecraft.
This was Kimbrough’s third spacewalk and Whitson’s seventh spacewalk. Kimbrough and Whitson not only successfully accomplishing their tasks for the day, they were also able to perform several get-ahead tasks.
What did the view look like? That’s Earth! The ISS orbits the planet at 17,500mph at an altitude of approximately 250 miles.
On the upcoming January 13th spacewalk, Kimbrough will be joined by Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency (ESA).
Take a look at ISS spacewalks over time –
Click here to watch the upcoming spacewalk on January 13th, scheduled to begin at 7:05 am ET.
For more about the International Space Station, visit NASA.gov.