Spacewalks to prepare station for spacecraft
Commander Shane Kimbrough during a space walk in January.
Image: NASA.
In three upcoming spacewalks, astronauts will check out an ammonia leak and hook up equipment needed for commercial crew spacecraft to dock. The first two spacewalks are scheduled for March 24 and 30. The final spacewalk – the 200th -- is set for April 6, NASA officials said during a televised press briefing today.
The spacewalks will involve preliminary work to allow installation later this year of a docking adapter that will provide a second port for the commercial crew spacecraft, according to Kenneth Todd, the space station's operations integration manager.
In recent years, American astronauts have been taken to the station aboard Russian spacecraft. But Boeing Co. and SpaceX have been building and testing spacecraft to carry out tests and launch missions for the space agency. The two companies are expected to take astronauts to the station in 2018.
The astronauts will also be checking out an ammonia leak. The leak is not necessarily unusual. “When you have pressurized systems in the environment that we’re talking about, they are not leak-proof,” Todd said during the press conference. “So it is very important that we have to continually watch all of these systems.”
Beyond readying the space station to receive commercial crew spacecraft, the astronauts -- Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson of NASA, and Thomas Pesquet of the European Space Agency -- will help maintain the station’s scientific equipment. During the final spacewalk, they will install equipment that powers mechanisms monitoring the Earth’s atmosphere and environment.
Asked if they could use the station’s robotic arms to do the spacewalks, NASA employees pointed out that the robots aren't enough. “At the end of the day, you’ll never take the place of having a crew member on-site, giving you real-time feedback,” Todd said. “There’s a lot of overhead in doing spacewalks. But at this point, we get more than our value in return.”
Related:
Budget cuts pay off for Russia
Boeing, SpaceX to fly astronauts to station
Follow StudyHall.Rocks on Twitter.
If you would like to comment, give us a shout, or like us on Facebook and tell us what you think.
