AFRICA
NASA Executes Spacewalk on International Space Station
On Sunday, May 21, NASA explained that two of its astronauts will execute a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Tuesday, May 23. This spacewalk is for the purpose of replacing a failed computer, just one of two computers that “control major U.S. systems aboard the orbiting outpost,” according to Irene Klotz of Reuters.
NASA, or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is a “United States government agency that is responsible for science and technology related to air and space.” Created in 1958, the agency sought to “oversee U.S. space exploration and aeronautics research.”
The computer was reportedly said to have “failed on Saturday [May 20], leaving the $100 billion orbiting laboratory to depend on a backup system to route commands to its solar power system, radiators, cooling loops and other equipment.” Fortunately, the station’s five-member crew (consisting of those from the United States, Russia and France) was secure and sound during this incident, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The U.S. space agency notes that NASA’s station commander Peggy Whitson and flight engineer Jack Fischer will collaborate together on this spacewalk—the spacewalk is expected to last two hours. On Sunday, Whitson “assembled and tested a spare electronics box to replace the failed device,” which NASA spokesman Dan Huot says was first installed, “during a spacewalk on March 30.” The last spacewalk occurred in December of 2015, when two astronauts ventured out of the space station to “release the brakes on a robot arm’s mobile transporter.”
Klotz adds, “The ISS, which is staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts, serves as a research laboratory for biology, life science, materials science and physics experiments, as well as astronomical observations and Earth remote sensing.” Controlled and run by fifteen countries, the International Space Station flies an approximate 250 miles above Earth’s surface.