New Delhi:
Indian-origin NASA astronaut Sunita Williams stepped off the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday for a spacewalk with colleague Nick Haag, the US space agency said.
This is Ms Williams' first spacewalk in 12 years, and the eighth of her career, while it is The Hague's fourth. The mission named US Spacewalk 91 is expected to last approximately six and a half hours.
Mr. Haag serves as crew member 1 of the spacewalk and wears a suit with red stripes. Ms. Williams serves as spacewalk member 2 and wears an unmarked suit.
The astronaut duo is currently working on performing maintenance tasks and replacing hardware, NASA said.
“NASA astronauts Nick Haag and Suni Williams step outside the Space_Station to support station upgrades, including repairs to our NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer) X-ray telescope.
In a blog post, NASA said Williams and Hague will work to replace a speed gyro assembly that helps provide orientation control for the station and install patches to cover damaged areas of light filters for NICER. They will also replace a reflector device used for navigation data on one of the international docking adapters.
In addition, the pair will check access areas and connector tools that will be used for future maintenance work on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
NASA also informed about a second spacewalk, which would begin at 8:15 a.m. on January 23.
During the second mission, Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams will remove a radio frequency group antenna from the station's truss and collect samples of surface material for analysis from the Destiny laboratory and the Quest airlock to see if there are any microorganisms on the outside of the prevent station. orbital complex.
They will also prepare a spare elbow joint for the Canadarm2 robotic arm, in case it is needed for replacement.
Meanwhile, NASA has once again postponed the mission to return Ms. Williams and Willmore to Earth, as the SpaceX Crew 10 launch has been postponed until the end of March 2025.
Ms. Williams and Mr. Willmore became the first to ride the Starliner, developed by Boeing. What started as an eight-day stay on the International Space Station (ISS) has now turned into ten months in space for the astronauts, while the malfunctioning Starliner, declared unsuitable for human travel by NASA, is back on Earth unscathed.
The astronauts were scheduled to return to Earth in February 2025 aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
However, NASA chose to postpone Crew 10 to allow additional preparation time for the new SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, to increase astronaut safety.
Recently, Ms. Williams commented that she “wants to go home because we left our families a while ago, but we still have a lot to do while we are here.”
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