Expedition 59 Flight Engineers Anne McClain of NASA and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency concluded their spacewalk at 2 p.m. EDT. During the six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk, the two astronauts successfully established a redundant path of power to the Canadian-built robotic arm, known as Canadarm2, and installed cables to provide for more expansive wireless communications coverage outside the orbital complex, as well as for enhanced hardwired computer network capability. The duo also relocated an adapter plate from the first spacewalk in preparation for future battery upgrade operations.
This was the third spacewalk in just under a month on the space station. The first two spacewalks installed powerful lithium-ion batteries for one pair of the station’s solar arrays. On March 22, the first spacewalk was completed by McClain and fellow NASA astronaut Nick Hague. On March 28, the second spacewalk was completed by Hague and NASA astronaut Christina Koch.
- March 22 was the first spacewalk for NASA astronauts Hague and McClain. McClain became the 13th female spacewalker in history.
- March 29 also was the first spacewalk for NASA astronaut Christina Koch, who became the 14th female to complete a spacewalk.
- Saint-Jacques became the first Canadian Expedition astronaut to walk in space and the fourth Canadian astronaut to spacewalk overall.
- Space station crew members have conducted 216 spacewalks in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory. Spacewalkers have now spent a total of 56 days 10 hours and 53 minutes working outside the station.
Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.
Good work all involved! I suppose you could call replacing a new, but non-functioning, lithium-ion battery with old, but functioning, nickel-hydrogen batteries an “upgrade”.
You all are awesome. I thank God there are people like you.
Good job well done on the this morning’s spacewalk Expedition 59-60!! Congratulations!! and get some rest!!
I’m reading a book on zero gravity and I can’t put it down.
I was confused by the wording in one part of this article. Third paragraph, third bullet deals with Saint-Jacques and his spacewalking history. This was his first ever spacewalk. He became the fourth Canadian to ever spacewalk and it’s worth noting that it had been 12 years since the last Canadian performed a spacewalk. I enjoy living vicariously by watching the very brave and incredible men and women as they go about the tasks with such expertise. Thanks for the (to me anyhow) thrilling entertainment.
If you want to rewatch like people watch Star Wars maybe NASA will reair