Expedition 61 Flight Engineers Christina Koch and Jessica Meir of NASA will begin a spacewalk outside of the International Space Station Wednesday, Jan. 15.
Live coverage of the spacewalk will begin at 5:30 a.m. EST on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
This is the first of two battery replacement spacewalks this month. Meir and Koch will replace nickel-hydrogen batteries with newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries for the power channel on one pair of the station’s solar arrays. The batteries were transported to the station in September aboard the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle.
The spacewalking work continues the overall upgrade of the station’s power system that began with similar battery replacement during spacewalks in January 2017. In October, Koch and Meir replaced a failed power charging component, also known as a battery charge-discharge unit (BCDU). The BCDU regulates the charge to the batteries that collect and distribute solar power to the orbiting lab’s systems.
Watch the animation for more detail on this spacewalk.
Follow @space_station on Twitter for updates online. For more information about the International Space Station, visit www.nasa.gov/station.