Expedition 50 astronauts gears up for Friday spacewalk outside space station

New Delhi: Expedition 50 astronauts will conduct spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, March 24 to prepare for the future arrival of US commercial crew spacecraft and upgrade station hardware.

NASA TV will provide complete coverage beginning at 6:30 am, with the six-and-a-half hour spacewalks scheduled to begin about 8 am.

The spacewalk will be performed by Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough of NASA and Flight Engineer Thomas Pesquet of European Space Agency (ESA).

According to NASA, the spacewalk will prepare the Pressurized Mating Adapter-3 (PMA-3) for installation of the second International Docking Adapter, which will accommodate commercial crew vehicle dockings.

The PMA-3 provides the pressurized interface between the station modules and the docking adapter. Shane Kimbrough and Thomas Pesquet will disconnect cables and electrical connections on PMA-3 to prepare for its robotic move on Thursday, March 30.

PMA-3 will be moved from the port side of the Tranquility module to the space-facing side of the Harmony module, where it will become home for the docking adapter, which will be delivered on a future flight of a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship.

The spacewalkers will also install on the starboard zero truss a new computer relay box equipped with advanced software for the adapter.

They will lubricate the latching end effector on the Canadarm2 robotic arm, inspect a radiator valve suspected of a small ammonia leak and replace cameras on the Japanese segment of the outpost.

Radiators are used to shed excess heat that builds up through normal space station operation.

This will be the 198th spacewalk in support of space station assembly and maintenance.

NASA is conducting two more spacewalks on April 2 and April 7.