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NASA TV Broadcasts Live Spacewalk Coverage Friday Morning

Expedition 59 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. Coverage will begin its live coverage at 6:30 a.m.

Watch the spacewalk on NASA TV and on the agency’s website.

This will be the 215th spacewalk in support of space station assembly and maintenance. Hague will be designated extravehicular crew member 1 (EV 1), wearing the suit with red stripes. Koch will be designated extravehicular crew member 2 (EV 2), wearing the suit with no stripes.

Hague and Koch have configured their spacesuits and reviewed procedures for tomorrow’s spacewalk at the 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.

This is the second battery replacement spacewalks this month. Hague and Koch will work on a second set of battery replacements on a different power channel in the same area of the station from the recent spacewalk on March 22.

During that spacewalk, NASA Flight Engineer Anne McClain and Hague replaced some nickel-hydrogen batteries with newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries for the power channel on one pair of the station’s solar arrays. The batteries were transported to the station in September aboard the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle. The spacewalking work continues the overall upgrade of the station’s power system that began with similar battery replacement during spacewalks in January 2017.

Learn more about station activities by following @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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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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Spacewalkers Swapping Places; Crew Studies Brain and Muscles

A pair of astronauts are trading places on the next two spacewalks as the Expedition 59 crew continues upgrades and maintenance outside of the International Space Station. The orbital residents are also conducting space research to improve life for humans on and off Earth.

NASA announced Monday that Flight Engineer Nick Hague is joining fellow NASA astronaut Christina Koch on this Friday’s spacewalk. The duo will continue swapping old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries on the station’ Port-4 truss structure. Hague and astronaut Anne McClain performed the exact same work last week on the other side of the truss structure.

Hague is swapping places with McClain this Friday due to a spacesuit-sizing issue. McClain is tentatively planned to go outside on an April 8 spacewalk with Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques. The spacewalkers will install truss jumpers to provide secondary power to the Canadarm2 robotic arm.

McClain and Hague successfully installed new lithium-ion batteries during a spacewalk on March 22. Ground teams checked out the power channel immediately after the spacewalk with no issues. Over the weekend, attempts to recharge one of the batteries were unsuccessful. Engineers on the ground are continuing to identify the cause of the issue and explore possible solutions. There has been no impact to standard space station operations.

Science work is always ongoing aboard the orbital lab with the crew researching blood flow to the brain and muscle adaptation in space.

Hague spent a couple of hours this morning in the Kibo lab module measuring his arterial blood pressure using waveform data. The results will inform the Cerebral Autoregulation experiment that observes the brain’s blood vessels in microgravity.

Hague then joined Koch and collected leg, shoulder and back measurements for the Myotones muscle study in the Columbus lab module. Results could improve muscle rehabilitation techniques on Earth and in space.

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Mark Garcia

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Spacewalkers Complete Battery Swaps for Station Power Upgrades

Expedition 59 Flight Engineers Nick Hague and Anne McClain of NASA concluded their spacewalk at 2:40 p.m. EDT. During the six-hour, 39-minute spacewalk, the two NASA astronauts successfully replaced nickel-hydrogen batteries with newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries for the power channel on one pair of the station’s solar arrays.

Astronauts were also able to accomplish several get-ahead tasks including removing debris from outside of the station, securing a tieback for restraints on the Solar Array Blanket Box, and photographing a bag of tools for contingency repairs and the airlock thermal cover that is opened and closed for spacewalks.

These new batteries provide an improved power capacity for operations with a lighter mass and a smaller volume than the nickel-hydrogen batteries. Next week, McClain and flight engineer Christina Koch are scheduled to venture outside on the March 29 spacewalk to work on a second set of battery replacements on a different power channel in the same area of the station. This would be the first-ever spacewalk with all-female spacewalkers.

Hague and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency are scheduled to conduct a third spacewalk April 8 to lay out jumper cables between the Unity module and the S0 truss, at the midpoint of the station’s backbone. This work will establish a redundant path of power to the Canadian-built robotic arm, known as Canadarm2. They also will install cables to provide for more expansive wireless communications coverage outside the orbital complex, as well as for enhanced hardwired computer network capability.

Space station crew members have conducted 214 spacewalks in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory. This was the first spacewalk for both McClain and Hague. Spacewalkers have now spent a total of 55 days, 21 hours and 39 minutes working outside the station.

Keep up with the crew aboard the International Space Station on the agency’s blog, follow @ISS on Instagram, and @space_station on Twitter.

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Mark Garcia

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