NASA is gearing up for another spacewalk at the International Space Station (ISS), the ninth such activity involving its astronauts this year.
Recent space station arrivals Thomas Marshburn and Kayla Barron will exit the ISS on Thursday, November 2, to carry out work on a faulty antenna system.
The walk was supposed to take place on Tuesday, but NASA postponed it after spotting space debris near the ISS.
NASA has now declared the situation safe, paving the way for the two astronauts to replace a malfunctioning S-band antenna system with a spare one that’s already fixed to the station’s truss structure. The agency said that although the issue is having limited impact on the station’s communications with controllers on the ground, now is the best time to replace it.
Thursday’s extracurricular activity — as spacewalks are officially known — will be the fifth for Marshburn, whose previous walks took place in 2013 and 2009. This is Barron’s debut space mission, so she’ll be venturing outside the station for the first time.
The most recent ISS spacewalk took place in September 2021 and was conducted by European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Akihiko Hoshide of Japan’s space agency.
How to watch
NASA will provide live coverage of the spacewalk via the video player embedded at the top of this page. The same coverage will also be livestreamed on NASA’s website.
NASA’s broadcast will start at 5:30 a.m. ET (2:30 a.m. PT) on Thursday, December 2, with Marshburn and Barron exiting the station’s Quest airlock at about 7:10 a.m. ET (4:10 a.m. PT).
The spacewalk is likely to take around six-and-a-half hours, so you can dip in at any point throughout Thursday morning to find out what’s going on.
The livestream will include video from multiple cameras, including from devices fixed to the astronauts’ helmets. You’ll also be able to hear a live audio feed featuring communications between the astronauts and Mission Control. A running commentary offering information on what the astronauts are doing will also be part of the livestream.
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