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Watch Spacewalkers Install New Commercial Docking Port on NASA TV

NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan, assigned as flight engineers for Expedition 60 aboard the International Space Station, will begin a planned six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk from inside the Quest airlock about 8:20 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 21. Live NASA Television coverage will begin at 6:30 a.m. The duo will assist in the installation of International Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3) to Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 on the space-facing side of the station’s Harmony module.

NASA experts provided an overview of the spacewalk activities in a preview briefing Friday, Aug. 16.

IDA-3 will provide a second docking port to the International Space Station to accommodate the future arrivals of Boeing CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX Crew Dragon  commercial crew spacecraft. The docking port was launched to the station last month on a SpaceX Dragon on the company’s 18th commercial cargo resupply services mission to the station. IDA-2 was installed to the forward end of the Harmony module in the summer of 2016.

NASA’s commercial crew partnership with Boeing and SpaceX will restore launches of American astronauts from American soil on American rockets and maximize the time U.S. crews can dedicate to scientific research and technological advances aboard the orbiting laboratory to enable the agency’s ambitious goals for the Artemis lunar exploration program and future missions to the Moon and Mars. Regular human space transportation to the space station is a critical step to opening the space station for commercial business to enable the growth of the U.S. commercial space sector and the development of a robust low-Earth orbit economy.

Learn more about station activities by following the space station blog, @space_station and @ISS_Research on Twitter as well as the ISS Facebook and ISS Instagram accounts.

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Mark Garcia

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Spacewalkers Installing New Commercial Docking Port Wednesday

A new commercial crew docking port is in position on the International Space Station ready for installation during Wednesday’s spacewalk. Russia is also counting down to the launch of an unpiloted Soyuz spacecraft to the orbiting lab just a few hours after tomorrow’s spacewalk.

The Expedition 60 crew was asleep when the Canadarm2 robotic arm grappled and removed the International Docking Adapter-3 (IDA-3) from the rear of the SpaceX Dragon cargo craft. Robotics controllers then remotely guided the IDA-3 to the Harmony module’s space-facing port and inspected it with the Canadarm2.

Spacewalkers Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan will set their spacesuits to battery power Wednesday at 8:20 a.m. EDT and exit the Quest airlock to finish installing the IDA-3. The duo will spend about six and a half hours routing cables and configuring the station’s second Boeing and SpaceX crew vehicle docking port. NASA TV is broadcasting live the spacewalk starting Wednesday at 6:30 a.m. See an animation of their planned activities.

Commander Alexey Ovchinin with Flight Engineers Christina Koch and Luca Parmitano familiarized themselves with tomorrow’s spacewalk procedures. Koch also prepared Hague and Andrew’s installation tools and set up the IDA-3 control panel.

Parmitano moved on and continued researching cell differentiation for the Micro-15 investigation. Afterward, he photographed biofilm samples in the Kubik incubator for the BioRock space mining study that explores how microbes interact with rocks.

The Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft is standing at its launch pad in Kazakhstan preparing for a liftoff just a few hours after Hague and Morgan finish their spacewalk. The unpiloted vehicle will blast off Wednesday at 11:38 p.m. EDT and test its 2.1a booster segment during ascent. The Soyuz spacecraft will automatically dock to the station’s Poisk module on Saturday at 1:30 a.m.

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Mark Garcia

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