NASA Television coverage of today’s spacewalk with NASA Flight Engineers Kayla Barron and Raja Chari now is underway and also is available on the NASA app, the Space Station blog and the agency’s website.
The crew members of Expedition 66 are preparing to exit the International Space Station‘s Quest airlock for a spacewalk expected to begin at approximately 8:05 a.m. EDT and last approximately 6.5 hours.
Barron and Chari will assemble and install modification kits required for upcoming solar array upgrades. The pair will install brackets and struts to support the future installation of an ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA). So far, two of six iROSAs have been deployed on station with four additional arrays to be delivered. The arrays will ultimately augment six of the station’s eight power channels, increasing the station’s total available power from 160 kilowatts to up to 215 kilowatts.
Barron will serve as extravehicular crewmember 1 (EV 1) and will wear a suit with red stripes. Chari will serve as extravehicular crewmember 2 (EV 2) and will wear a suit with no stripes. The spacewalk will be the second of Barron’s career and the first for Chari. Astronauts Tom Marshburn and Matthias Maurer will assist the spacewalkers in and out of their spacesuits and monitor their external activities.
Astronaut roles for the next spacewalk on March 23 will be confirmed soon.
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.
Get weekly video highlights at: http://jscfeatures.jsc.nasa.gov/videoupdate/
Get the latest from NASA delivered every week. Subscribe here: www.nasa.gov/subscribe