NASA astronauts to conduct spacewalk outside space station today

New Delhi: NASA astronauts Ricky Arnold and Drew Feustel of Expedition 55 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) and NASA TV will broadcast live coverage of the spacewalk at 4:00 p.m IST (6:30 a.m. ET).

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.

Meanwhile, a Russian cargo craft departed the space station on Wednesday after completing a six-month stay at the Pirs docking compartment. It will orbit Earth for a month where Russian ground controllers will conduct a series of engineering tests on the 68P. 

The cargo ship will then reenter the atmosphere on April 25 loaded with trash and discarded items for a fiery but safe demise over the Pacific Ocean, NASA said.

(With IANS inputs)