Early Wednesday, NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Bob Behnken will leave the International Space Station on a spacewalk to upgrade the laboratory’s power systems in orbit.
The spacewalk comes just a few days after Cassidy lost a mirror during a successful maintenance excursion outside of the space station.
Aided by NASA astronaut Doug Hurley, Cassidy and Behnken were making final preparations on Tuesday for the upcoming spacewalk. Cassidy and Behnken will begin the spacewalk at 7:35 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, according to NASA, which says extravehicular activity (EVA) will last approximately six and a half hours.
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“Cassidy and Behnken have one more aged nickel-hydrogen battery to remove from the Starboard-6 lattice structure and place on an external paddle,” NASA explained on its website. “They will replace it with a new lithium-ion battery that will channel the energy collected from the station’s main solar panels. After that work, the duo will advance and route the power and ethernet cables before returning to the orbiting lab to complete their spacewalk. “
In this image taken from the NASA video, NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy correctly answers a question while fellow astronaut Robert L. Behnken listens during an interview aboard the International Space Station on Monday, June 29, 2020.
(NASA via AP)
Last week Cassidy and Behnken did the first of four spacewalks scheduled to replace old batteries. While the spacewalk was successful, ISS commander Cassidy lost a mirror during the project, which he described as “a real nuisance.”
Cassidy said she has no idea how the little mirror peeled off her left sleeve. The mirror band is very tight, he noted, and may have caught on a metal tether when it came out of the lock on Friday.
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“I just looked down and saw this reflective thing disappear in the dark, and that was the last thing I saw,” Cassidy said in an interview with The Associated Press. “That was a real nuisance to me.”
He will use a spare for Wednesday’s spacewalk. Spacewalk astronauts use a mirror on each sleeve to view the displays on the control panel of their chest.
In 2013, NASA noted that more than 500,000 pieces of debris, or space debris, are tracked while orbiting Earth.
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Hurley and Behnken arrived at the International Space Station last month after the expected launch of the Demo-2 mission from the Kennedy Space Center on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The mission is the first time that astronauts have launched from American soil since the last space shuttle flight in 2011.
Doug Hurley, along with Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner, will assist Cassidy and Behnken during the spacewalk on Wednesday.
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“Hurley will be on duty helping spacewalkers get in and out of their space suits and monitoring the excursion,” NASA said on its website. “Cosmonaut Roscosmos Ivan Vagner will attend the NASA trio on Wednesday.”
Associated Press contributed to this article.
Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
