This Thursday, February 2, two astronauts will be performing a spacewalk from the International Space Station (ISS) to work on installing hardware to the station’s exterior as part of an ongoing project to upgrade the power system.
These events are always fascinating to watch, and the entire spacewalk will be livestreamed by NASA. We have the details on how to watch below.
What to expect from the spacewalk
The two spacewalkers will be Nicole Mann of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), who performed their first spacewalk together earlier this month. They will be continuing the work they began then of preparing the exterior struts of the space station for future spacewalks to install new solar arrays.
While on the previous spacewalk on January 20, Wakata snapped a stunning selfie showing him working on the station’s exterior, which you can see above. Along with Mann, he was working to install platforms to the station’s power channels 1A and 1B. They will continue the work to ready to station for the installation of the new solar arrays, called iROSAs.
How to watch the spacewalk
The spacewalk will be shown live on NASA TV, including commentary from experts to explain what the astronauts are working on and to talk about the challenges of working in a zero-gravity environment. It will be a long livestream, lasting up to eight hours, so you can dip in and out throughout the day if you’d like to get an occasional view of the action.
The livestream will begin at 6:45 a.m. ET/3:45 a.m. PT on Thursday, February 2, covering preparations for the spacewalk and information about the goals of the mission. The spacewalk itself is scheduled to begin at around 8:15 a.m. ET/5:15 a.m. PT, and coverage will continue until the spacewalk is complete — that will likely be around 3 p.m. ET/12 p.m. PT.
To watch the livestream on NASA TV, you can either use the video embedded near the top of this page, or you can head directly to NASA’s YouTube channel.
