NASA astronauts got a “pretty impressive” view of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle docked at the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Friday (June 29).
Astronauts Chris Cassidy and Bob Behnken had the vision of a lifetime when they left the space station to replace the old solar panel batteries at the outpost. The star of that view was Endeavor, the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft that delivered Behnken and fellow NASA astronaut Doug Hurley to the station on May 30 on their Demo-2 mission.
Cassidy snapped a photo of the view, with Endeavor clearly in a straight line but also visible the JAXA HTV-9 cargo vehicle. In the photo, illustrated just below the ship, you can see the impressive blue curvature of the Earth.
“Yesterday @Astro_SEAL took this photo from our job site at @Space_Station ‘- Crew Dragon from @ SpaceX and HTV from @ JAXA_en in sight. Not bad for a view while working …” wrote Behnken on June 27 , the day after the spacewalk, Twitter.
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Today (June 29), when asked about the most memorable moments of this spacewalk during a press conference aboard the space station, Behnken pointed to this view as one of those moments.
“Chris and I had a great event last Friday and a wonderful view of Dragon,” said Behnken. “It was amazing to be able to look back and take a photo and I think we got a good daylight shot that showed HTV and Dragon in front of the space station. It was pretty impressive.”
The pair went on this spacewalk to swap old nickel-hydrogen batteries for new, more efficient, and smaller lithium-ion batteries as part of a series of battery-swapping spacewalks. Behnken and Cassidy will venture on another battery swapping spacewalk on Wednesday (July 1).
Yesterday @Astro_SEAL took this photo from our workplace at @Space_Station – Crew Dragon by @ SpaceX and HTV by @ JAXA_en in plain sight. Not bad for a view while working … pic.twitter.com/DsV5owA3P927 June 2020
While Behnken and Hurley, who assisted with the spacewalk from the space station, remain in orbit, Endeavor will continue to go through testing as the Demo-2 mission is a test flight for the vehicle. But, as Behnken said today during the press conference, “Our ship has performed really well. I think they have had many predictions.[ion]s in terms of how it would behave with respect to temperature, how it would behave with respect to radiation for computers and electronic devices on board. And that was really as expected. ”
He added that Endeavor’s positive performance has been “what really gives Doug and me continued confidence in the vehicle.”
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