Cape Canaveral:Astronauts completed their second spacewalk in under a week Wednesday to replace old batteries outside the International Space Station.
Commander Chris Cassidy and Bob Behnken quickly tackled the big, boxy batteries. For every two outdated batteries coming out, a new and improved one goes in to supply power to the space station on the night side of Earth.
Within a couple of hours, the astronauts had installed another new battery, the third one in this latest series of spacewalks that began last Friday. NASA plans to send the pair out twice more in July to finish the battery swap-outs that began in 2017. The new lithium-ion batteries should last the rest of the space station’s life, according to NASA.
With their main chore completed, Cassidy and Behnken jumped ahead to loosen the bolts on the batch of old batteries coming out next time and remove other equipment. Some of the bolts required extra muscle and another stubborn mechanism just wouldn’t come off.
“Boy, it put up a good fight,” Cassidy radioed. “These batteries, they like their home.”
The astronauts had enough time to route power and Ethernet cables outside the 260-mile-high (420-kilometer-high) outpost before the six-hour spacewalk drew to a close.
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Good thing there’s an Earth down there to tell up from down, Cassidy said.
NASA wants the battery work completed before Behnken returns to Earth in August aboard a SpaceX capsule. He's one of two test pilots who launched on SpaceX's first astronaut flight in May.