If you’re fond of waking up early and getting the awe-inspiring perspective of an astronaut floating in space, put Sunday’s spacewalk on your calendar.
Astronauts Kate Rubins, Victor Glover Jr. and Soichi Noguchi are preparing for two upcoming spacewalks that will take them outside of the International Space Station on February 28 and March 5.
The spacewalks will assist with a continuation of upgrades for the space station orbiting Earth. Rubins and Glover are NASA astronauts and Noguchi is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut.
Both spacewalks, lasting about six and a half hours each, will air live on NASA’s website and the NASA TV channel.
Coverage for the February 28 spacewalk will begin at 4:30 a.m. ET, and the astronauts are expected to begin their walk at 6 a.m. ET. The March 5 spacewalk coverage will begin at 5:30 a.m. ET, and the astronauts expect to leave the hatch around 7 a.m. ET.
If that Sunday spacewalk seems earlier than previous spacewalks – especially given that it’s occurring on the weekend – well,it is. But “it’s not really a Monday through Friday kind of program,” reminded Kenny Todd, deputy manager for the International Space Station program, during a press conference Wednesday.
These will be the 235th and 236th spacewalks in the history of the station.
For the first spacewalk, Rubins and Glover will pair up to prepare for upcoming solar array upgrades by assembling and installing modification kits. While the station’s current solar arrays are still functioning well, they are degrading. This degradation is expected because they only have about a 15-year life and were installed in December 2000 – so they’ve outlasted the warranty, so to speak.
Brand-new solar arrays will be placed in front of six of the arrays currently on the station later this year, boosting the station’s power from 160 kilowatts to 215 kilowatts, according to NASA. The solar arrays will begin launching to the space station on a SpaceX vehicle in June.
During the February 28 spacewalk, Rubins will be crew member 1 in the suit bearing red stripes, and Glover will be crew member 2 in a suit with no stripes.
Rubins and Noguchi will pair up for the March 5 spacewalk to complete a number of tasks, including venting ammonia from the Early Ammonia System, replacement of a wireless video transceiver assembly, and installation of a “stiffener” on the Quest airlock thermal cover. This will prevent the cover from blowing out when atmosphere escapes whenever the hatch is opened.
Glover began work on this during his last spacewalk by adding a stronger magnet to keep the cover closed.
Rubins will be crew member 1 in the red-striped suit on March 5, and Noguchi will be crew member 2 in the stripeless suit.
All three crew members are veteran spacewalkers at this point. Glover has already conducted two spacewalks since arriving at the space station in November. This will be his third.
Rubins previously conducted spacewalks during her first rotation on the space station in 2016, so these will be her third and fourth spacewalks. And Noguchi will add a fourth spacewalk to his career; he previously conducted three spacewalks during his shuttle flight in 2005 to help with repairs to the space station.