NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken concluded their spacewalk at 1:10 p.m. EDT, after six hours. The two NASA astronauts completed all the work to replace batteries that provide power for the station’s solar arrays on the starboard truss of the complex. The new batteries provide an improved and more efficient power capacity for operations.
The spacewalkers removed six aging nickel-hydrogen batteries for the second of two power channels for the starboard 6 (S6) truss, installed three new lithium-ion batteries, and installed the three associated adapter plates that are used to complete the power circuit to the new batteries. Mission control reports that all three new batteries are working.
The work nearly completes a 3.5-year effort to upgrade the International Space Station’s power system. At completion, 24 new lithium-ion batteries and adapter plates will replace 48 aging nickel-hydrogen batteries. In April 2019, one of the newly installed lithium-ion batteries on the near port truss blew a fuse, so two nickel-hydrogen batteries were re-installed to take its place. A new replacement lithium-ion battery arrived to the space station in January 2020 aboard the SpaceX Dragon on its 19th commercial resupply services mission and is stowed on the station’s truss until it can be installed during a future spacewalk later this year.
Behnken and Cassidy are scheduled to conduct one more spacewalk Tuesday, July 21, during which they will remove two lifting fixtures used for ground processing of the station’s solar arrays prior to their launch. They’ll also begin preparing the Tranquility module for the installation of a commercial airlock provided by NanoRacks and scheduled to arrive on a SpaceX cargo flight later this year. The airlock will be used to deploy commercial and government-sponsored experiments into space.
This was the ninth spacewalk for each astronaut. Behnken has now spent a total of 55 hours and 41 minutes spacewalking. Cassidy now has spent a total of 49 hours and 22 minutes spacewalking.
Space station crew members have conducted 230 spacewalks in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory. Spacewalkers have now spent a total of 60 days, 6 hours, and 34 minutes working outside the station.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Wondering Internationals Space Station will fly over to the moon orbits as well Mars orbits? It is better than to let ISS will crash into the somewhere in ocean in 2024 or beyond due to contract? So Keep space station go to the moon to save NASA’s budget?
Thanks,
Cindy
The International Space Station was not designed to leave Earth orbit.
Great work! I believe that the external pallet with the nickel-hydrogen batteries from the last set of battery upgrade spacewalks completed in January has been placed into (or onto) HTV-9 for disposal. Will there also be room on HTV-9 for the current external pallet with the nickel-hydrogen batteries from this series of spacewalks, or will that pallet have to wait for another vehicle?
Nine of the 12 old batteries removed earlier this year will be destroyed aboard HTV-9 attached to the HTV-8 pallet. There is not enough room for all of them to be disposed of, so three of each old set remain on the truss. Nine of the 12 old ones in the process of being removed will be put on the HTV-9 external pallet for robotic jettison later this year.
Thanks for the information! That should be quite a sight. Any plans to broadcast the robotic jettison live?
The HTV-9 pallet robotic jettison is planned for later this year but has not been scheduled yet. The jettison will probably not be televised live.
Well done congratulations keep it up
Well done for the efforts of the team ( both the ground and space) for your commitment and dedication in pushing the frontiers of scientific research.
Um trabalho excelente com sistema solar no espaço com armazenamento de baterias.