NASA to conduct first spacewalk in eight months on November 15
After a hiatus of nearly eight months, NASA is going to conduct a series of spacewalks outside the International Space Station (ISS). Spacewalks were suspended since March 23 when a small amount of water was found in an astronaut’s helmet. The first space walk will be conducted on November 15 and the space agency will provide live coverage of the event.
How to watch the spacewalk
NASA will provide live coverage of the seven-hour spacewalk starting at 5 PM on November 15. You can watch the livestream on NASA Television, the NASA app or through the YouTube link below.
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What will happen during the spacewalk
On November 15, NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Frank Rubio will exit ISS through the Quest airlock in order to assemble a mounting bracket on the station’s truss assembly. The mounting brackets are being installed so that ISS team members can later install solar arrays to increase electrical power to the station.
Why were spacewalks suspended?
On March 23, a small amount of water was found in European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Matthias Maurer’s helmet. After Mauer’s spacewalk, the space station crew immediately removed his helmet and worked with the ground support team to gather data about the issue. The incident was classified as a close call and NASA declared a stop to all pending spacewalks.
Maurer’s space suit and samples of the water found in it were sent back to Earth. NASA teams complete a detailed test and teardown of the spacesuit to find out what happened and ruled out hardware failures as a cause. According to NASA, the excess water discovered in the space suit was likely formed condensation due to the integrated suit systems performing multiple settings for crew cooling and crew exertion simultaneously.
Apart from updating operational procedures for the integrated systems, NASA also developed new hardware to mitigate the likelihood of such condensation and water accumulation. After this, NASA gave the green light for resuming spacewalks.
