Spacewalking astronauts went out on Sunday to install support frames for high-efficiency solar panels that will reach the International Space Station later this year.
NASA’s Kate Rubins and Victor Glover put together the first set of climbing brackets and struts, and then installed them alongside the station’s oldest and most polluted sunshades. But the work took longer than expected, and they barely started the second set before calling off.
Rubins will complete work at a second spaceflight later in the week.
The astronauts had to put out hundreds of pounds of climbing brackets and struts in 8-foot (2.5-meter) duffle-style bags. The equipment was so big and horrible that it had to be dismantled as furniture, just to get through the forest.
Some connection points required additional turning of the power drill and were still insufficient, as can be seen by black lines. The astronauts had to use ratchet wires to deal with the harder bolts, which slowed them down. At one point, they were twice as late.
“Whoever painted this black line painted the outside of the lines a bit,” Glover said at one point that was very troubling.
“We will be working on our kindergarten skills here,” replied Mission Control, urging us to move forward.
With more people and experiments flying on the space station, more power will be needed to keep everything going, according to NASA. The six new solar panels – which will be delivered in pairs with SpaceX in the next year or so – should increase the station ‘s electrical capacity by as much as 30 per cent.
Rubins and Glover faced the struts for the first two solar panels, which were due to launch in June. Their spacewalk completed seven hours, a little longer than expected.
“Appreciate your hard work. I know there were a lot of challenges, ”Mission Control radioed.
The eight solar panels up there are now between 12 and 20 years old – most of them past their design life and decaying. Each panel is 112 feet (34 meters) long by 39 feet (12 meters) wide. Tip to tip counting the center frame, each pair stretches 240 feet (73 meters), beyond the width of the Boeing 777’s wings.
Boeing is offering the new roller panels, about half the size of the old ones but just as powerful thanks to the latest solar cell technology. They are placed at an angle above the old ones, which keeps them working.
A prototype was tested at the space station in 2017.
Rubins’ helmet featured a new high-definition camera that provided stunning views, especially those showing the vibrant blue Earth 270 miles (435 kilometers) below. “Great,” said Mission Control.
The spacewalk Sunday was the third for Navy pilot Rubins and Glover infectious disease specialist – both of whom could fly to the moon.
They are among 18 astronauts newly assigned to the Artemis program on NASA’s lunar land. The next whites come from this group.
Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris issued a congratulatory call to Glover, the first African American astronaut to survive full-time at the space station. NASA released the video exchange Saturday.
“The history you are making, we are so proud of you,” said Harris. Like the first ones, Glover replied, it won’t be the last. “We want to make sure we can keep doing new things,” he said.
Rubins will be floating back out Friday with Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi to cover the prep work of the solar panel, and to move and refill ammonia cooling pipes.
Glover and Noguchi were among four astronauts that arrived through SpaceX in November. Rubins was launched from Kazakhstan in October along with two Russians. They are expected to return to Earth in the spring.
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