Two NASA astronauts will carry out the yr’s first spacewalk at the moment (Jan. 16), and you’ll watch the motion dwell.
Nick Hague and Suni Williams are scheduled to enterprise outdoors the Worldwide Area Station (ISS) at the moment round 8:00 a.m. EST (1300 GMT), kicking off an extravehicular exercise (EVA) occasion that is anticipated to final 6.5 hours.
NASA will webcast the spacewalk dwell, starting at 6:30 a.m. EST (1130 GMT). Area.com will carry the feed if the company makes it out there.
The 2 astronauts have a busy day forward of them. Hague and Williams will “patch gentle leaks within the NICER X-ray telescope, then prepared the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer for future upgrades,” NASA officers wrote in a Jan. 15 blog post.
Associated: Spacewalks: How they work and main milestones
“The skilled spacewalking duo can even change superior engineering {hardware} to keep up station orientation and supply navigation information,” the put up added.
NICER (quick for “Neutron Star Inside Composition Explorer”) launched to the station in June 2017 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The instrument research black holes, superdense stellar remnants referred to as neutron stars and different cosmic phenomena in X-ray gentle from its perch outdoors the orbiting lab.
In Might 2023, nonetheless, the instrument developed the aforementioned “gentle leaks.” Daylight started getting into NICER by way of a number of small tears in its thermal shields, interfering with the telescope’s science work. At this time’s spacewalk goals to repair that drawback by putting in patches that can block the leaks.
Will probably be the primary on-orbit restore of a NASA area telescope by astronauts because the closing Hubble servicing mission in 2009, company officers mentioned.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is a $2 billion particle detector that launched to the ISS in 2011. The instrument hunts for elusive darkish matter by characterizing high-energy particles referred to as cosmic rays.
Hague arrived on the ISS in late September on SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission and presently serves as a flight engineer on the orbiting lab’s present Expedition 72.
Williams, the Expedition 72 commander, reached the ISS in early June with fellow NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore on the primary crewed flight of Boeing’s new Starliner spacecraft. The duo’s mission was purported to final simply 10 days or so, however Starliner suffered issues with its thrusters, and NASA finally determined to carry the spacecraft down uncrewed in September. Williams and Wilmore will return to Earth subsequent month with Hague and his Crew-9 crewmate, Alexandr Gorbunov of the Russian area company Roscosmos.
This would be the fourth spacewalk of Hague’s astronaut profession and the eighth total for Williams. Hague will put on a spacesuit with crimson stripes, whereas Williams’ can be unmarked, NASA officers mentioned.
