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Astronauts Ready After Robotics Sets Up Worksite for Friday Spacewalk

Astronauts Nick Hague and Christina Koch have configured their spacesuits and reviewed procedures for tomorrow’s spacewalk at the International Space Station. Robotics controllers also readied the Port-4 (P4) truss structure so the spacewalkers can continue battery swaps and power upgrades outside the orbital lab.

Hague and Koch will set their spacesuits to battery power Friday around 8:20 a.m. inside the Quest airlock. They will exit Quest to swap old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries on the P4 truss. NASA TV will begin its live coverage of the scheduled 6.5-hour spacewalk Friday at 6:30 a.m.

Ground specialists in Mission Control remotely commanded the Canadarm2 robotic arm and its “robotic hand” Dextre to set up the P4 worksite throughout week. The fine-tuned robotics maneuvers transferred the batteries between an external pallet and the P4 worksite over several days.

NASA astronaut Anne McClain is tentatively scheduled to join Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques on April 8 for another spacewalk. The spacewalkers will install truss jumpers to provide secondary power to the Canadarm2.

Meanwhile, McClain collected her blood and urine samples today for ongoing human research. She spun the samples in a centrifuge and stowed them in a science freezer for later analysis. Saint-Jacques worked on computer electronics maintenance throughout the day.

Expedition 59 commander Oleg Kononenko and Alexey Ovchinin, both of Roscosmos, stayed focused on activities in the station’s Russian segment on Thursday. The duo spent the morning on life support maintenance before checking docked vehicle communications and photographing windows in the Zvezda service module.

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Mark Garcia

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Spacewalks Preps and More Brain Research At Station Today

Two days away from the second International Space Station spacewalk of 2019 and the Expedition 59 crew is studying the human brain and an astronaut’s wake-sleep cycle in space.

Flight Engineers Nick Hague and Christina Koch will exit the Quest airlock Friday for about 6.5 hours of battery swaps to upgrade the station’s power storage capacity. The duo will set their spacesuits to battery power about 8:20 a.m. EDT Friday signifying the start of their spacewalk. NASA TV will begins its live coverage at 6:30 a.m.

While Hague and Koch were organizing their spacewalk tools today, the duo had time to research how blood flows to the brain in microgravity. Koch took Doppler waveform measurements of her arterial blood pressure for the Cerebral Autoregulation study. Hague then closed out the brain blood-flow experiment and stowed its gear in the Kibo lab module.

Astronaut David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency was back on spacesuit duty today cleaning cooling loops, checking tools and readying the SAFER jetpacks. He later worked on a wearable device, the Actiwatch Spectrum (AWS), which measures an astronaut’s daily wake-sleep cycle, or circadian rhythm. The AWS provides doctors insights into sleep quality, sleep onset and ambient light quality aboard the orbital lab.

NASA astronaut Anne McClain also assisted with the spacesuit work today checking the SAFER jet packs and reconfiguring the U.S. spacesuits. She also worked on a science freezer and trashed obsolete ultrasonic hardware designed to detect pressure leaks.

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Mark Garcia

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