Two ISS Spacewalks Set For Trio Of First-Timers

HOUSTON—NASA plans a pair of International Space Station (ISS) spacewalks in October that will feature three different first-time Expedition 70 spacewalkers.

The trio will focus on the operations of Gateway, a future lunar-orbiting, human-tended version of the ISS, as well as external scientific research and maintenance of the seven-person orbital outpost.

NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara will participate in both spacewalks, set for Oct. 12 and Oct. 20. She was part of the Russian Soyuz MS-24 cosmonaut/astronaut trio that launched and docked to the ISS on Sept. 15 for a six-month tour of duty.

O’Hara will be joined for the first excursion by European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Andrea Mogensen, current commander of the orbital laboratory’s seven-member crew. It is scheduled to get underway at 10 a.m. EDT Oct. 12. Mogensen is part of the SpaceX Crew-7 Dragon foursome that launched and docked to the ISS over Aug. 26-27.

The task list for the planned 6-hr. excursion includes the gathering of external samples of possible microorganisms on the exterior of the U.S. Quest airlock structure and vent sites on the outside of the ISS U.S. segment Destiny laboratory module. The samples gathered by O’Hara are to be preserved for return to Earth.

An analysis could reveal what kinds of microorganisms might be hardy enough to survive the radiation, thermal and vacuum environment of low Earth orbit. This is a health concern as NASA turns its human space exploration focus to deep space, Dana Weigel, NASA’s ISS deputy program manager, told an Oct. 6 news briefing previewing the spacewalk activities.

Russian scientists have also studied the external microorganism issue.

Mogensen will spend much of the Oct. 12 excursion positioned on the end of the ISS’s 57-ft.-long, multijointed Canadian robot arm, replacing an external camera with an upgraded version of the imager that includes wireless access.

For the first time during a spacewalk, the robot arm will be commanded from NASA’s Mission Control at Johnson Space Center rather than by another astronaut aboard the ISS.

“Over the many years, we have done a lot of advancements in being able to operate the robot arm from the ground, using it for things like science experiments and replacing pieces of equipment on the outside of the space station. This is just expanding our operational envelope of being able to operate the arm with a crew member outside,” explained NASA’s Elias Myrmo, the Oct. 12 spacewalk flight director.

“Doing this helps us to develop some operational concepts we can apply to the Gateway program. As part of Artemis, Gateway will also have a robot arm, and some of the test of operations we will be doing as part of this [spacewalk] will help us inform the operational concepts for that future program,” Myrmo explained.

The multi-module Gateway is to orbit the Moon, starting with its assembly that is planned for no earlier than 2025. Astronauts launched to the Moon aboard Orion crew capsules atop Space Launch System rockets are to dock with Gateway. The astronauts are to then transfer to a commercial Human Landing System that is to transport them to and from the Moon’s surface.

Not continuously crewed, the Gateway’s robot arm will have to be commanded from Earth for operational and science activities.

During the Oct. 12 spacewalk, NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli will be standing by inside the ISS to take over robot arm operations should there be an unanticipated loss of communications with Mission Control.

O’Hara and Mogensen are to also conduct some external inspections of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a cosmic ray observatory launched to the ISS in 2011 and installed on the truss to further research into the origins of cosmic rays and antimatter.

“The goal of the upgrade is to be able to get more data throughput and higher accuracy. The term they use with the AMS is instrumentation layers,” Weigel explained. “The terms they use for the goal is to build and install a new outer layer and upper layer, which will give us more data throughput and also higher accuracy.”

A series of future spacewalks will be required.

“This early one is really going to help us understand what cabling connections could be used to help connect a future upgrade. So that will inform some of the design solutions in the future, and then there is a series of [spacewalks] to actually install the tracker and address some of the challenges that come along with heat rejection.”

Planned for 6 1/2 hr., the Oct. 20 outing is scheduled to get underway at 7:30 a.m. EDT. It will be led by Moghbeli, who commanded the SpaceX Crew-7 Dragon during the late-August ISS launch to docking. Moghbeli will be joined by O’Hara.

A bit more hand intensive, the second spacewalk is to include the removal of a faulty electronics box from a communications antenna on the starboard side of the ISS solar power truss and replacement of a Trundle Bearing Assembly associated with a solar array rotary joint on the port side of the truss. In all, the ISS is equipped with a dozen of the bearing assemblies that enable the station’s outstretched solar arrays to rotate in order to track the Sun to generate electricity during the sunlit portion of each ISS 90-min. orbit around the Earth.

O’Hara and Moghbeli were selected by NASA for astronaut training in 2017 and are flying in space for the first time. An aerospace engineer, O’Hara has a background in oceaneering. Moghbeli is a U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and veteran combat and test pilot.

An aerospace engineer, Mogensen was selected by ESA for astronaut training in 2009. He participated in a 10-day Russian Soyuz mission to the ISS in September 2015.