Two astronauts tackled a list of leftover maintenance duties outside the International Space Station on Saturday (March 13), completing the work originally planned for previous spacewalks.
Expedition 64 crewmembers Victor “Ike” Glover and Mike “Hopper” Hopkins, both with NASA, ventured out of the space station’s Quest airlock for the 6-hour and 47-minute extravehicular activity (EVA) on Sunday (March 13). The spacewalk, which began at 8:14 a.m. EST (1314 GMT), marked their third foray together since arriving at the station in November on SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft “Resilience”.
The two astronauts’ first task, postponed from a spacewalk earlier this month, was to vent the remaining ammonia from two jumper cables used to carry coolant into the station’s thermal control system. Working at the far left end of the track complex’s spine, Glover and Hopkins released the ammonia from the pair of hoses and then put one jumper in place and moved the other to the side of the airlock as needed to prevent coolant leaks. find in the future.
“I can see venting,” Hopkins said after releasing the ammonia from the first jumper. “Oh yes, look at that!”
“That’s more than I thought,” he said a moment later as coolant continued to squirt into the room.
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Since ammonia is poisonous, the two spacewalkers paused to inspect each other’s space suits to make sure there were no ammonia ice crystals attached to them.
“I can see the top of your helmet, your lights, the PLSS [portable life support system], your shoulders, your arms – I don’t see anything stuck, ”Glover reported of Hopkins’ spacesuit. “It looks clean.”
After putting away the jumpers and tidying up the tools they used to dispose of the ammonia, Glover and Hopkins split their paths to continue separate tasks outside the space station.
Glover, who was designated Extravehicular Crew Member 1 (EV1) and wearing a spacesuit with red stripes for identification, left for the Unity node to replace a faulty wireless camera transceiver with a new one.
Meanwhile, Hopkins, clad in a stripe-less spacesuit like EV2, transferred to ESA’s European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory, where he worked to route electrical cables to the module’s Bartolomeo remote experiment platform. Glover and Hopkins had installed the same rig during a spacewalk on Jan. 27, but encountered problems connecting some of the cables, preventing the platform from becoming fully operational.
“Covered!” Hopkins exclaimed after successfully plugging in the first of the tricky connectors. “And the crowd is going wild!”
“Fun!” Glover replied.
“Well done! Wow! Excellent. Good news,” reported ESA astronaut Andreas (Andy) Mogensen, who guided Hopkins and Glover through their work from Mission Control in Houston.
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While Hopkins continued to work on the second and third of four Bartolomeo cables, Glover completed the wireless transceiver replacement and proceeded to install a ‘stiffener’ on the Quest airlock thermal cover to provide additional structural integrity and to prevent the fabric hatch from being pushed open when not in use.
“Springer, there’s something in my right eye,” Glover radioed to Hopkins. “I can see it, but it’s annoying to keep it open.”
Glover continued to work on the hatch stiffener, but described the problem with his eye in more detail to Mission Control.
“It’s irritated when I keep it open. When I close it I’m fine, slightly irritated and it’s watery. So tears, it causes tears,” Glover said, adding that blinking seemed to help.
A few minutes later, Glover said his right eye was back to normal.
Hopkins, meanwhile, had no fun locking the fourth connector on the Bartolomeo platform. Despite his best efforts, including using a chain as a makeshift handle to pull down the locking mechanism, Hopkins was unable to get the cable into place, and Mission Control advised to hand it over.
Instead, Hopkins went on to reconfigure a ham radio antenna on the Columbus module. Astronauts use ham radio to connect with enthusiasts and students around the world, both as an educational resource and for the public.
As the final task for the spacewalk, Glover and Hopkins got together to begin routing two Ethernet cables for high-definition cameras on the port bundle.
The spacewalk ended at 3:01 PM EST (2001 GMT) with the Quest airlock repressurizing.
Glover has now spent a total of 26 hours and 7 minutes on four spacewalks. Hopkins has now logged 32 hours and 1 minute on its five EVAs. This was the 237th spacewalk to support the assembly and maintenance of the International Space Station, for a total duration of 62 days, 3 hours and 54 minutes.
Robert Pearlman is a contributing writer to Space.com and the editor of collectSPACE.com, a Space.com affiliate site and the leading space history news publication. Follow collectSPACE on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Follow us @Spacedotcom and Facebook. Original article on Space.com.