Crew Continues Spacewalk Preps Following Date Adjustment

Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (suit with red stripes) and Nikolai Chub (suit with blue stripes) are pictured during a spacewalk for maintenance on Oct. 25, 2023.
Cosmonauts Oleg Kononenko (suit with red stripes) and Nikolai Chub (suit with blue stripes) are pictured during a spacewalk for maintenance on Oct. 25, 2023.

The Expedition 70 crew is gearing up for another spacewalk planned at the beginning of November for maintenance on the outside of the International Space Station. The next United States orbital segment spacewalk now is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 1, to allow the International Space Station crew and flight control team additional time to prepare for the excursion.

NASA astronauts  Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli will exit the station’s Quest airlock to remove an electronics box called the Radio Frequency Group that was part of a communications antenna system. They also will replace one of 12 trundle bearing assemblies on the station’s port solar alpha rotary joint. The bearings enable the station’s solar arrays to track the Sun. The spacewalk was previously planned for Monday, Oct. 30.

U.S. Spacewalk 89 will be the first for both Moghbeli and O’Hara. Moghbeli will serve as extravehicular activity crew member 1 and will wear a suit with red stripes. O’Hara will serve as extravehicular crew member 2 and will wear an unmarked suit.

O’Hara and Moghbeli worked throughout Thursday checking tools and readying hardware they will take with them outside the Quest airlock for the maintenance spacewalk. The pair was also joined by astronauts Andreas Mogensen of ESA (European Space Agency) and Satoshi Furukawa of JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) reviewing their spacewalk procedures during the afternoon.

O’Hara began her day installing communications hardware to support a laser technology study. Moghbeli spent a few moments on research maintenance removing a failed electronic unit from a science freezer and packing it for stowage. Mogensen analyzed station air samples then transferred data collected from wearable health-monitoring gear.

Furukawa had time throughout the day to focus on a variety of science activities including examining microgravity’s effects on astronauts and setting up a biology microscope. The two-time station visitor first took a cognition test measuring how long-term space missions impact a crew member’s brain structure and function. Next, Furukawa prepared a microscope to observe how cells respond to weightlessness. He later scanned the neck, shoulder, and leg veins of Mogensen using the Ultrasound 2 device with assistance from doctors on the ground.

The orbiting lab’s three cosmonauts slept in Thursday following a seven-hour and 41-minute spacewalk the day before. The duo along with Flight Engineer Konstantin Borisov awoke mid-afternoon and conducted post-spacewalk cleanup activities then held a conference with specialists on the ground. Borisov would later collect air samples for analysis and configure life support gear in the Nauka science module.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on X, as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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