NASA Television coverage of today’s spacewalk with NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken is now underway and available on the agency’s website.
The crew members of Expedition 63 are preparing to venture outside the International Space Station for a spacewalk expected to begin at approximately 7:35 a.m. EDT and last as long as seven hours.
The crew is in the airlock and have donned their suits in preparation to exit the airlock and begin today’s activities working on one of two power channels on the far starboard truss (S6 Truss) of the station.
The primary tasks for today, as illustrated in a NASA animation, are to remove three existing nickel-hydrogen batteries and replace them with two new lithium-ion batteries. The batteries store electricity for one pair of the station’s solar arrays. Cassidy and Hurley also will be installing an adapter plate to complete the circuit to the new batteries and relocating the nickel-hydrogen batteries, two of which will be moved to an external platform for future disposal.
Leading the mission control team today is Flight Director Royce Renfrew with support from Jackie Kagey as the lead spacewalk officer.
Learn more about station activities by following @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.