Two astronauts from the International Space Station's Expedition 36 team successfully completed the first of two July spacewalks meant to carry out maintenance as well as set up the space station to receive a new Russian laboratory module.
Astronauts Chris Cassidy from NASA and rookie Italian Luca Parmitano from the European Space Agency (ESA) entered the void of space at 8:02 a.m. EDT and finished their required tasks 6 hours and 7 minutes later at 2:09 p.m. EDT.
"Have fun out there," said fellow Expedition 36 crewmember Karen Nyberg as the pair exited the station.
Both Cassidy and Parmitano fixed, photographed, gathered experiments, and moved components around in an effort to keep the space station up and running. Of special note is the preparation for a new Russian multipurpose laboratory module expected later this year.
"Cassidy routed cables from the Unity node to the interface between the Pressurized Mating Adapter-1 and the Zarya module," NASA explained, adding that the rest of the work will be completed in a future spacewalk. "The new module, known as Nauka, will serve as a research facility, docking port and airlock for future Russian spacewalks and will replace the Pirs docking compartment."
The spacewalk is the 170th carried out for the International Space Station (ISS), bringing the total amount of time humans have spent walking in space for the ISS to over 1,000 hours. It is Parmitano's, and Italy's, first spacewalk, but veteran Cassidy had already logged in close to 25 spacewalking hours prior to the July 9 spacewalk, which was his fifth.
The next spacewalk, scheduled for Tuesday, July 16, will continue the work started, and will further prep the space station for the addition of the Russian lab module.
- Contribute to this Story:
- Send us a tip
- Send us a photo or video
- Suggest a correction
