Astronauts to install solar panels on ISS 0:37
(CNN) -
The International Space Station (ISS) is about to receive a powerful update.
On Wednesday morning, NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet will go on a spacewalk to begin the installation of new solar panels.
The panels will help provide a boost of energy to the space station.
The walk is scheduled to begin around 8 a.m. ET, with live coverage on NASA's television channel and website starting at 6:30 a.m. ET.
The spacewalk is expected to last around six and a half hours.
Pesquet will wear red stripes on his spacesuit as a member of Extravehicular Crew 1 and Kimbrough will wear the suit without stripes as a member of Extravehicular Crew 2.
The two astronauts will continue these updates during a spacewalk on Sunday.
These are spacewalks 239 and 240 in support of the assembly, maintenance and improvement of the station.
Tasks for Wednesday's spacewalk include installing the first two of the ISS's six deployable solar arrays, called iROSA, which will upgrade six of the eight energy channels on the space station.
The first matrix will be installed at the extreme left of the main structure of the station.
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Kimbrough and Pesquet will install the second solar panel on Sunday.
The solar panels arrived at the space station on June 5 after the launch of the 22nd SpaceX Dragon cargo resupply mission.
The space station's robotic Canadarm2 was used to remove the spacecraft's solar panels last Thursday.
The matrices are rolled up like a carpet and weigh 340 kilograms and are 3 meters wide.
Once the astronauts have unfolded and screwed the arrays into place, they will be approximately 19 meters long and 20 feet wide.
This deployment process will take about six minutes.
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Once the astronauts put the starter bolts in place at the top, they will let go of the matrix and observe.
This process will not be visible to the station's cameras given its location, so Kimbrough's HD helmet camera will capture this display.
Inside the space station, NASA astronaut Megan McArthur will help put the arrays in place using Canadarm2.
To protect the astronauts as they are working around electrical connectors, ground personnel have been busy running a plasma forecast to determine what type of electrical charge the space station will be in during the walk, according to Kieth Johnson, spacewalk manager. .
The metallic aspects of the spacesuits will be covered to avoid metal contact that could cause an electric shock.
The time of the spacewalk has been planned so that the giant solar panels are in the dark and do not generate power.
Astronaut Shane Kimbrough is on a spacewalk in 2008.
These will be the seventh and eighth spacewalks for Kimbrough and the third and fourth for Pesquet, and it's not the first time these two have taken a walk together outside the space station.
Kimbrough and Pesquet were on the space station in 2017 and previously conducted two spacewalks together to replace old nickel-hydrogen batteries with new, longer-lasting lithium-ion batteries.
A SpaceX ship carries a special mission to the International Space Station
While the current solar panels on the space station are still working, they have been supplying power to the space station for more than 20 years and are showing some signs of wear and tear after prolonged exposure to the space environment.
The matrices were originally designed to last 15 years.
Erosion can be caused by thruster plumes, which come from both the station's thrusters and the crew and cargo vehicles coming and going from the station, said Dana Weigel, deputy director of the International Space Station Program. .
'The other factor that affects our solar panels is micrometeorite debris.
The arrays are made up of many small energy chains, and over time those energy chains can degrade if hit by debris, ”he said.
The new solar panels will be placed in front of the current ones.
This will give the space station a boost, increasing its total available power from 160 kilowatts to 215 kilowatts.
It's also a good test for the new solar panels because this same design will power parts of the Gateway lunar outpost, helping humans return to the moon through NASA's Artemis program in 2024.
"The exposed part of the old panels will still be generating power in parallel with the new arrays, but those new Iris arrays have solar cells that are more efficient than our original cells," Weigel said.
"They have a higher energy density and, in combination, they can generate more energy than our original matrix did when it was new."
The new arrangements will have a similar expected useful life of 15 years.
However, since the degradation of the original matrices was expected to be worse, the team will monitor the new matrices to test their true longevity.
International Space Station