NASA astronaut Anil Menon and CSA astronaut Joshua Kutryk will exit the Quest airlock Thursday at 8 a.m. EDT to place one of two roll-out solar arrays onto the port truss structure of the International Space Station. Both are Expedition 75 flight engineers.
The astronauts will begin by releasing the array from an external pallet. Menon will attach to Canadarm2, retrieve the array, and ride the robotic arm to the port truss worksite. Kutryk will stay tethered to the truss, translate (move along the truss) to the worksite, and join Menon to complete the installation. Once the work ends, mission controllers will switch on the new roll-out solar array.
Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, NASA flight engineers, will help the spacewalkers into and out of their suits and assist with Canadarm2 during the excursion. The four crew members practiced Canadarm2 maneuvers together on Monday. On Monday, Menon and Kutryk tested their emergency jetpacks for fuel quantity, battery power, and thruster functionality. Watkins helped Kutryk verify that the suit’s cooling and water systems were safe for Thursday.
According to friendsofnasa.org, Jessica Meir and Anil Menon, NASA astronauts, finished an Aug. 6 spacewalk at 3 p.m. EDT, Menon’s first and Meir’s sixth, lasting six hours and 27 minutes. The outing was the 281st spacewalk supporting station assembly, maintenance, and upgrades. During that work, they prepared the 3B power channel for roll-out solar array installation to provide additional power for critical systems and to enable a safe, controlled deorbit of the station.
Expedition 75 crew members worked on spacesuit preparation, medical research, and routine station operations on July 28 as Menon prepared for the initial August spacewalk in a planned series of three, according to IndiaWest Journal. For the initial August excursion on Aug. 6, Menon was set to partner with Expedition 75 commander Jessica Meir on a spacewalk expected to run about six-and-a-half hours and aimed at readying the station for its seventh roll-out solar array, part of ongoing efforts to strengthen the station’s power system. The group of Menon, Meir, Jack Hathaway, and Sophie Adenot examined two spacesuits in the Quest airlock for comfort and mobility before powering them up to verify life-support and electronic systems. NASA had not named astronauts for the second and third spacewalks planned for August.
Watkins and Menon moved supplies between the station and the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft on Monday as part of routine station operations. Dragon docked autonomously to the space-facing port of the Harmony module on Oct. 15 and will come back to Earth in mid-November carrying science and hardware for analysis. Delaney used a computer tablet to log sleep data for RelaxPro, an investigation into improving stress reduction during long-duration spaceflight, and he also tended to bioprinted blood vessel tissues to support research using microgravity to create custom, individualized patient tissues. The tissue work fit into a Monday schedule that included spacewalk preparations, cargo transfers, and other research.
Pyotr Dubrov, the station commander, and Anna Kikina, a Roscosmos flight engineer, put on arm, wrist, and finger cuffs to check how weightlessness affects circulation. The two Roscosmos crew members collaborated on human physiology research while another flight engineer studied advanced tools for communication between crew and controllers. Sergey Teteryanikov, another flight engineer, examined how superintelligence tools might improve crew operations and communication with mission controllers while Dubrov and Kikina wore cuffs to check circulatory responses to weightlessness.
.jpg){kind=link}
Join the discussion