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On Monday, February 1, two NASA astronauts will set off together for their second spacewalk to tackle the battery and camera upgrade for the International Space Station.
NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover, who arrived at the space station on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft in November and completed their first spacewalk together Wednesday, January 27, are scheduled to leave the station by the Quest airlock at 7:05 am EST (1205 GMT) and will spend approximately 6.5 hours working in the vacuum of space.
NASA TV will provide live coverage of the preparations for the spacewalk starting at 5:30 a.m. EST (10:30 a.m. GMT). You can watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV, or directly through the agency’s website.
Related: Spacewalk Photos: International Space Station Gets Power Upgrade
Hopkins and Glover will tackle a variety of tasks during this spacewalk, including installing a new high-definition camera on the Destiny lab and replacing another camera on the station’s starboard beam. Space walkers will also install a final lithium-ion battery to wrap up a big space station electrical upgrade that began in 2017.
After Hopkins and Glover exits the Quest airlock, the Spacewalkers’ first task will be to make their way to the Port-4 (P4) truss structure of the space station, where they will install an adapter plate for the new lithium battery. ion. The battery was preinstalled on beam P4 by the station’s robotic arm Canadarm2, NASA officials wrote in an ISS blog.
Once the battery work is done, the astronauts will head to the other side of the orbiting lab to replace the high-definition cameras on the starboard beam. Space walkers will also run Ethernet cables to the starboard beam before heading to Japan’s Kibo lab to install a “wrist vision” camera on Kibo’s 10-meter (33-foot) robotic arm.
Related: The International Space Station: Inside and Out (infographic)
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Monday’s spacewalk will be the fourth spacewalk in Hopkins’ career and the second for Glover. Hopkins will be designated as Extravehicular Crew 1 (EV-1), which means he will wear the red striped space suit and be the first to exit the airlock. As EV-2, Glover will be wearing the plain white suit with no stripes.
NASA is planning two more spacewalks “in the near future,” the agency said in a statement. After Monday’s spacewalk, the next spacewalk will see Glover and NASA astronaut Kate Rubins preparing the space station for new solar panels to be installed at the station later this year. Next, for the fourth spacewalk of 2021, Rubins will travel with Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Soichi Noguchi to “continue improving the station’s components,” NASA said. in a press release.
Email Hanneke Weitering at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @hannekescience. Follow us on twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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