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Astronauts from NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have embarked on the year’s fourth spacewalk to service the International Space Station (ISS).
NASA TO PROVIDE FIRST UPDATE ON PERSEVERANCE ROVER SINCE LANDING
NASA flight engineer Kate Rubins and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi exited the station on Friday shortly after 6:30 a.m. ET in a continuation of the effort to ready the station for solar array upgrades.
Rubins arrived at the space station on Oct. 14, 2020, and Noguchi arrived in November as part of NASA’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission.
This marks the fourth career spacewalk for each astronaut.
The pair will spend 6.5 hours outside the ISS and will complete several tasks including venting ammonia from the Early Ammonia System and installing a “stiffener” device on the Quest airlock thermal cover.
The work to install solar array modification kits began during Sunday’s spacewalk.
“The new solar arrays, which will be delivered to the space station on upcoming SpaceX Dragon cargo missions, are a larger version of the Roll-Out Solar Array (ROSA) technology and will ultimately increasing the station’s total available power from 160 kilowatts to up to 215 kilowatts,” NASA said in a blog post.
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NASA’s live coverage of the 236th spacewalk can be viewed on NASA Television, the NASA app and the agency’s website.
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