Astronauts Spacewalking Live Now on NASA TV
NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken have begun the second of two scheduled spacewalks to replace batteries on one of two power channels on the far starboard truss (S6 Truss) of the International Space Station.
The spacewalkers switched their spacesuits to battery power at 7:13 a.m. EDT to begin the spacewalk, which may last as long as seven hours.
Watch the spacewalk on NASA TV and on the agency’s website.
Cassidy is extravehicular crew member 1 (EV 1), wearing the spacesuit with red stripes, and using helmet camera #18. Behnken is extravehicular crew member 2 (EV 2), wearing the spacesuit with no stripes and helmet camera #20. It is the eighth spacewalk for both astronauts and the 229th spacewalk in support of space station assembly and maintenance.
The spacewalkers will be removing the sixth nickel-hydrogen battery for this channel and replace it with a new lithium-ion battery and an adapter plate that arrived on a Japanese cargo ship last month. The swap will upgrade the station’s power supply by replacing the batteries that store power generated by the station’s solar arrays and provide it to the microgravity laboratory when the station is not in sunlight as it circles Earth during orbital night.
Cassidy and Behnken also will route power and ethernet cables and do work to prepare for future power system upgrades.
Learn more about station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Mark Garcia
Powered by WPeMatico
