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Derek Richardson
March fifteenth, 2022
Two NASA astronauts accomplished a spacewalk to organize the Worldwide House Station for a brand new set of photo voltaic arrays scheduled to reach later this yr.
On March 15, 2022, NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Raja Chari, two ISS Expedition 66 flight engineers, carried out U.S. EVA-79 — the second of the yr for the ISS and the third for the seven-person Expedition 66 increment, which started in October 2021.
The 2 spacewalkers left the Quest airlock at 8:12 a.m. EDT (12:12 UTC) to start what could be a 6-hour 54-minute spacewalk.
The aim of this outing was to put in a photo voltaic array modification equipment on the 3A energy channel’s mast canister, situated on the S4 truss section. S4 is situated on the starboard facet of the house station’s built-in truss meeting.
NASA stated this spacewalk is actually a mirror of the one which occurred in mid September 2021 on the P4 truss section.
This was the fourth of six mod kits put in over the past couple years to permit for brand spanking new roll-out photo voltaic arrays to be connected to the ISS.
Known as iROSA, the primary two had been put in in June 2021. The following two are anticipated to be added later this yr after being delivered by a SpaceX cargo Dragon.
These new arrays are being added as a result of the eight legacy photo voltaic array wings are starting to lose effectivity, as anticipated, due to their age.
The 115-foot (35-meter) lengthy arrays had been delivered to the ISS in pairs on house shuttle missions between 2000 and 2009. They every had a 15-year design life.
The brand new 63-foot (19-meter) lengthy arrays are being deployed over the prevailing arrays, so that they’ll lose some power-generating capability. Nevertheless, as soon as all six iROSA units are put in, the facility producing capability by the U.S. section is ready to extend to about 215 kilowatts from roughly 160 kilowatts earlier than the improve.
Following this set up, they started making ready battery charge-discharge items for future robotics work. This concerned eradicating and restraining thermal covers in addition to breaking and resetting the torque of a number of bolts.
With the duo working at break-neck velocity, there was sufficient time for a fast get-ahead process to be carried out, which concerned the spacewalkers checking entry and clearance for patch panels beneath the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
Whereas the crew was making their means again to the Quest airlock, there have been a number of points that cropped up.
First, a security tether on Chari’s spacesuit didn’t retract, prompting the duo to convey collect the un-retracted tether contained in the airlock. Nevertheless, it took some effort to make sure the tether didn’t block the outer hatch.
In the meantime, there was a false fireplace alarm initiated within the NG-17 Cygnus spacecraft. Nevertheless, all the pieces was deemed nominal and the crew continued the method of closing Quest’s outer hatch and repressurizing the airlock.
The spacewalk ended at 3:06 p.m. EDT (19:06 UTC), concluding Barron’s second outing and Chari’s first. It was additionally the 247th spacewalk in help of ISS meeting and upkeep since 1998.
One other spacewalk is deliberate for March 23 and is anticipated to see a medley of upkeep duties carried out.
Derek Richardson
Derek Richardson has a level in mass media, with an emphasis in up to date journalism, from Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas. Whereas at Washburn, he was the managing editor of the scholar run newspaper, the Washburn Evaluate. He additionally has a weblog in regards to the Worldwide House Station, referred to as Orbital Velocity.
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