ISS astronauts to take spacewalk outside space station today: Watch NASA's live streaming

New Delhi: Expedition 55 crew member Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will conduct a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday, March 29, 2018.

The astronauts are scheduled to begin the spacewalk at 5:40 p.m IST (8:10 a.m. ET).

NASA is live streaming it on Twitter

Watch it here

LIVE NOW: @Astro_Feustel & @Astro_Ricky prepare to go outside @Space_Station for today’s #spacewalk. Watch: https://t.co/QqRGDS6kZ8

— NASA (@NASA) March 29, 2018

This will be the 209th spacewalk in support of International Space Station assembly, maintenance and upgrades. The excursion will be the seventh in Feustel’s career and the third for Arnold.

According to NASA, the two astronauts will install wireless communications equipment on the station’s Tranquility module to enhance payload data processing for the ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) experiment being flown to the station on a future SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft. The experiment will measure the temperature of plants on Earth to better understand how much water they need and how they respond to stress.

The duo will also swap out high-definition video cameras on the port truss of the station’s backbone and remove aging hoses from a cooling component on the station’s truss.

(With IANS inputs)