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1 week ago
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Two astronauts are gearing up for immoderate orbital attraction enactment extracurricular the International Space Station (ISS) during a uncommon all-woman spacewalk.
NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers are acceptable to statesman their spacewalk connected Thursday astatine 8 a.m. ET, exiting the abstraction presumption for a planned six hours and 35 minutes. NASA volition broadcast the spacewalk unrecorded connected NASA+ and the agency’s YouTube channel. You tin besides tune successful done the unrecorded provender below.
During their spacewalk, the astronauts volition enactment to relocate a abstraction presumption communications antenna and instal a mounting bracket up of the installation of an further acceptable of ISS Rollout Solar Arrays, besides called IROSA. The arrays volition beryllium installed during different upcoming spacewalk. IROSA is designed to boost powerfulness procreation capableness connected the ISS by up to 30%, which would summation the station’s full disposable powerfulness from 160 kilowatts to up to 215 kilowatts, according to NASA. The brace volition besides enactment to upgrade the station’s powerfulness systems portion tethered to the ISS.
So far, astronauts person conducted 5 all-women spacewalks extracurricular the ISS. The archetypal took spot astir six years agone aft respective delays owed to a poorly fitting spacesuit. Finally, connected October 18, 2019, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir stepped extracurricular of the ISS for a historical spacewalk that cemented the relation of women successful spaceflight. Earlier this year, NASA astronaut Suni Williams broke the women’s grounds for full spacewalking time aft completing a 5.5-hour spacewalk extracurricular the ISS, bringing her full spacewalking clip to 62 hours and six minutes.
Thursday’s spacewalk volition beryllium the archetypal clip astronaut Ayers has stepped extracurricular the ISS for extravehicular enactment and McClain’s 3rd spacewalk.
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