NASA astronauts carry out 2nd spacewalk for space station energy updates

Behnken, along with NASA astronaut Doug Hurley, released from the United States and joined Cassidy on the room station on Could 31. They were aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon through the Demo-2 mission.

This spacewalk, identical to just one that took location past Friday, will concentrate on replacing batteries for a single of the electrical power channels on the considerably starboard truss of the station. Simply because the astronauts achieved some of the tasks for this spacewalk final week, they will also concentrate on responsibilities that had been scheduled for afterwards spacewalks, route ability and ethernet cables, and perform other preparations for long term electricity program upgrades.

These cables will offer better views on upcoming spacewalks, according to NASA.

These electrical power system upgrades, on the other hand, are practically nothing like changing batteries in your distant. The new batteries just about every have a mass of 428 pounds.

For this 2nd spacewalk, Cassidy will be crew member I and wearing a spacesuit showing purple stripes, while Behnken will serve as crew member II in a fit with no stripes. Hurley and Russian cosmonaut Ivan Vagner will enable Cassidy and Behnken into their spacesuits. Hurley will function the station’s robotic arm to support the astronauts outside the station.

The battery replacements, which will have a 20-yr lifetime, will set the station in a substantially superior configuration for the extended time period, reported Kenneth Todd, deputy Worldwide Area Station method supervisor, all through a NASA push conference past week.

Behnken recently reviewed the spacewalk, and why it is critical to substitute the batteries, throughout a contact to the room station from CNN Innovation and Space Reporter Rachel Crane.

“When the house station is in the sunlight, it is accumulating energy and it desires to keep for when it is in the darkish,” he claimed. “And so people batteries, as they’re cycled time and time once more, they wear down and have to have to be changed. And so periodically that maintenance is essential.”

Behnken explained he was hunting ahead to yet another spacewalk expertise.

“I actually search forward to the sights of the Earth when we get a cost-free instant,” he mentioned. “I believe each individual astronaut, when they go out on their 1st spacewalk, they are definitely concentrated on hoping to get all the routines completed and do a good job so that they can most likely get a possibility to do one more just one if the opportunity provides by itself.

“But immediately after you’ve got performed a pair and know what to count on as you go by way of it, it is critical to, you know, take some mental pictures, some mental pictures, or keep in mind what it was like to be outside.”