According to the information published on the Spanish language NASA website, during a 6-hour, 39-minute spacewalk, on March 22, the flight engineers of Expedition 59, Nick Hague and Anne McClain of NASA, placed the new more modern and powerful lithium-ion batteries in one of the channels that supplies the energy generated by two solar panels from the International Space Station (ISS).
These new lithium-ion batteries provide an improved power capacity for operations, due to their lower weight and volume, compared to the previous nickel-hydrogen batteries that have been replaced.
This week, on the first spacewalk of two female astronauts, a second set of batteries will be replaced
This week, McClain and flight engineer Christina Koch will make the second spacewalk if the programmed plan is fulfilled. During this trip, which will take place next Friday, March 29, McClain and Koch will work on replacing a second set of batteries in a different feeding channel, but in the same area of the Space Station. In addition, the event will be special for another reason, since it will be the first spacewalk carried out by two astronaut women.
Days later, Hague and David Saint-Jacques, from the Canadian Space Agency, will make the third spacewalk, as scheduled, on April 8. Then they will install the bridge cables between the Unity module and the S0 structure, at the midpoint of the station’s backbone. This work will establish a redundant feeding route to the robotic arm built in Canada, known as Canadarm2, as reported by NASA.
Cables will also be installed to provide more expansive wireless communications coverage outside the orbital complex, as well as improve the capacity of the wired computer network.
