Two NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station will conduct a spacewalk Monday, Oct. 30, to complete maintenance activities at the orbital complex.
Live coverage of the spacewalk begins at 6:30 a.m. EDT on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin about 8:05 a.m., and last about six-and-a-half hours.
NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara will exit the station’s Quest airlock to remove an electronics box called the Radio Frequency Group from a communications antenna on station.
They also will replace one of 12 trundle bearing assemblies on a solar alpha rotary joint. The bearings enable the station’s solar arrays to rotate properly to track the Sun as the station orbits the Earth.
When looking at the space station, the antenna is on the starboard (right side) truss, and the rotary joint is on the port, or left side.
U.S. spacewalk 89 will be the first for both Moghbeli and O’Hara. Moghbeli will serve as extravehicular activity crew member 1 and will wear a suit with red stripes.
O’Hara will serve as extravehicular crew member 2 and will wear an unmarked suit.
Station managers continue planning for another spacewalk with O’Hara, as well as ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, to collect samples for analysis to see whether microorganisms may exist on the exterior of the orbital complex.
That spacewalk, which now is U.S. spacewalk 90, has been postponed to no earlier than December.
