The spacewalk will help continue upgrades to the orbiting lab.
On Sunday, Rubins, along with fellow NASA astronaut Victor Glover Jr. made a spacewalk. Before that, her previous two spacewalks took place during her first rotation on the space station in 2016.
Noguchi has had to wait a little longer to add a fourth spacewalk to his career. He previously performed three spacewalks during his shuttle flight in 2005 to assist with repairs to the space station.
Rubins is crew member 1 in the red striped suit and Noguchi is crew member 2 in the stripe-less suit. The new high-definition helmet camera on Rubin’s suit provides a crystal-clear view of the astronaut’s perspective as she works outside the space station.
Rubins and Glover began preparations for upcoming solar panel upgrades by assembling and installing modification kits on Sunday. While the station’s current solar panels are still in good working order, they are in the process of being downgraded. This deterioration is expected because they only last about 15 years and were installed in December 2000 – so they basically outlived the warranty.
Brand new solar panels will be installed later this year for six of the arrays currently on the station, increasing the station’s power from 160 kilowatts to 215 kilowatts, NASA said. The solar panels will be launched to the space station in a SpaceX vehicle in June.
Rubins and Noguchi will complete the installation of solar panel modification kits on Friday before moving on to some other tasks, including disposing of ammonia used in the space station’s thermal control system to minimize the risk of being released into the ISS atmosphere.
This is the 236th spacewalk in the station’s history.