Space walkers perform space station power system upgrades

Three days after a Russian spacewalk, Japanese space station commander Akihiko Hoshide and Frenchman Thomas Pesquet floated outside for their own excursion on Sunday, building a stand for a solar panel blanket that will be attached over late.

Astronauts have also replaced a device that measures the strength of the electrical environment around the International Space Station as it interacts with charged particles in the far upper atmosphere.

A 3D camera mounted on the robotic arm of the space station was supposed to capture high-definition images of the spacewalk for use in a commercial documentary series, “The ISS experience. ”The film is intended to give viewers an immersive look at life in orbit.

“The procedures are developed so that the camera is completely out of the path of the astronauts,” said flight director Ali Boudous. “We made sure the camera got some amazing views, but that doesn’t interfere at all with our spacewalk tasks themselves.”

Floating in Quest’s airlock compartment, Hoshide, on his fourth spacewalk, and Pesquet, on his sixth, put their spacesuits on battery at 8:15 a.m. EDT, officially launching the 12th spacewalk. ‘now this year.

NASA is installing six new solar panel covers in deployment – iROSA – to augment the original eight wings of the space station, which have degraded over the years and no longer generate the power they produced when new.

IROSA covers are designed to be mounted on triangular frames made up of multiple spacers assembled in the Tinkertoy manner.

Two iROSA covers were installed on the left outer panel assembly in June. During Sunday’s spacewalk, Hoshide and Pesquet assembled the bracket for a left interior iROSA assembly, which will be installed next year or 2023. The remaining three iROSAs will be installed on the right side of the supply beam.

With the iROSA support framework in place, Hoshide and Pesquet replaced a device called a floating potential measurement unit, or FPMU, that had failed power. The device, located just inside the solar panels on the left side, measures the station’s charges from its interaction with the space plasma environment.

After collecting the tools and setting up their safety ties, Hoshide and Pesquet returned to the Quest airlock, sealed the hatch, and began the repressurization at 3:09 p.m. ET. The duration was six hours and 54 minutes, bringing the total time of the space station’s EVA to 1,541 hours and 54 minutes out of 244 spacewalks since assembly began in 1998.

Astronaut Mark Vande Hei had originally planned to join Hoshide for Sunday’s spacewalk, then scheduled for early September, but the outing was delayed after Vande Hei developed a pinched nerve in his neck.

To bring back the video of the spacewalk to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon freighter at the end of September as initially planned, NASA officials decided to replace Vande Hei with Pesquet because they wear the same suit size and because that Pesquet carried out three similar spacewalks in June.