US astronauts install ‘new port of call’
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WITH more private spaceship traffic expected at the International Space Station in the coming years, two US astronauts embarked on a spacewalk yesterday to install a special parking spot for them.
Americans Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 1204 GMT and floated outside the orbiting laboratory to begin the work of attaching the first of two international docking adaptors.
The spacewalkers finished the task in just over two hours.
Then, robotic machinery at the space station completed the hard mate, making the attachment permanent.
“With that, we have a new port of call,” said NASA commentator Rob Navias, as the space station flew over Singapore at 1440 GMT.
More work lies ahead in the 6 1/2-hour spacewalk for the astronauts, who must also connect power and data cables for the adaptor.
These fittings will enable the space station to share power and data with visiting spaceships.
Williams is making his fourth career spacewalk. He has accumulated 19 hours of spacewalk time so far.
The spacewalk is Rubins’s first. She is the 12th woman to walk in space.
NASA describes the docking adaptor as a “metaphorical gateway to a future” that will allow a new generation of US spacecraft — the first since the space shuttle program ended in 2011 — to carry astronauts to the space station.
The second docking adaptor is expected to be installed in 2018.
ISS operations integration manager Kenneth Todd called yesterday’s installation a “very significant milestone on the path to establishing commercial crew capability.”
Built by Boeing, the circular adaptor measures around 1 meter tall and about 1.6 meters wide.
The adaptors will work with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, two spaceships under construction that are planned to ferry astronauts to the space station.
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