NASA, ESA astronauts conclude 7-hour spacewalk outside International Space Station

NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet concluded their spacewalk at 3:26 p.m. EDT, after 7 hours and 15 minutes. In the seventh spacewalk of the year outside the International Space Station, the two astronauts installed a new ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSA) in the station’s backbone truss structure. Kimbrough and Pesquet successfully removed the array from its position in the flight support equipment. The spacewalk was disrupted due to a spacesuit problem but the issue was later resolved after some time.

Astronauts spacewalk to install solar panel

The two astronauts will go for the second spacewalk on June 20 at 6:30 am ET (10:30 UT) and continue installing the new solar panel. According to the blog post of NASA, Kimbrough has now spent a total of 46 hours and 15 minutes spacewalking, and Pesquet’s total spacewalking time is 19 hours and 47 minutes. However, before completing the spacewalk, NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough encountered a pair of spacesuit issues midway through the seven-hour spacewalk. He was forced to temporarily retreat back into the airlock to reset his equipment. 

The interruption put Kimbrough and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet an hour behind, then they had trouble trying to unfold the solar panel’s booms before time finally ran out. Kimbrough was safe the entire time, despite problems with his suit’s display control panel and a fleeting pressure spike in the cooling system. His control panel came back on, and Mission Control continued to monitor his suit’s cooling system. The duo conducted the most hazardous parts of the spacewalk on the nighttime side of Earth, to prevent the station’s old solar panels from soaking up sunlight and generating power. Launched by SpaceX earlier this month, the first of these new solar panels will operate alongside the station’s oldest electricity-producing wings. 

IMAGE: Astro_kimbrough/Twitter