NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Bob Behnken are about to emerge in the black.
The spacewalking duo will be making a fourth excursion outside the International Space Station (ISS) for Expedition 63 Today (July 21), and you can watch it all live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly through from the agency’s website. . The spacewalk started at 7:12 am EDT (1112 GMT).
Both astronauts, about to embark on their 10th professional spacewalk each and the 300th spacewalk involving NASA astronauts, got so close to schedule during their last extravehicular activity on Thursday (July 16) that they were all done. with the scheduled battery replacement work expected of them on July 21.
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During their spacewalks together, the astronauts continued to work to swap 48 aged nickel-hydrogen batteries in the International Space Station’s solar panels for 24 more efficient lithium-ion batteries, which should keep the station on until at least 2024. After From today’s spacewalk, just one more lithium-ion battery needs to be installed to complete the 3.5-year upgrade by various teams. The battery installation date has not yet been announced.
With the battery work largely completed, reports NASA’s ISS blog, Behnken and Cassidy are expected to serve the station’s starboard armor structure, where the new batteries are located. They will also do some work on the US Tranquility module to prepare it for a new NanoRacks commercial airlock that will support future commercial modules. (The airlock will be delivered later this year via a SpaceX flight.)
It will be a couple of busy weeks on the International Space Station after this spacewalk ends, the blog adds.
Russia plans to launch a Progress refueling ship on Thursday (July 23) at 10:26 am EDT (1426 GMT or 8:26 pm local time in Baikonur, Kazakhstan). Aboard the spacecraft will be nearly three tons of food, fuel, and supplies for the Expedition 63 crew, and it is expected to dock with the space station 3.5 hours after launch.
About a week later, Behnken and Expedition 63 crewmate Doug Hurley will leave the station in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. SpaceX and NASA plan to bring the crew back to Earth on August 1, depending on the weather. If all goes as planned, they will collapse 19 hours after undocking, on August 2, off the coast of the Florida Gulf. They became the first astronauts launched to orbit a commercial vehicle on May 30.
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