Washington: Two NASA astronauts hae eplaced the ageing batteries on the International Space Station (ISS). The astronauts replaced nickel-hydrogen batteries with newer, more powerful lithium-ion batteries for the power channel on one pair of the station's solar arrays.
In a Statement NASA said that stronauts - Nick Hague and Anne McClain - have successfully completed an over six-hour spacewalk and replaced the ageing batteries on the ISS. They also installed adapter plates and hooked up electrical connections for three of the six new lithium-ion batteries installed on the station's starboard truss.
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These new batteries provide an improved power capacity for operations with a lighter mass and a smaller volume than the nickel-hydrogen batteries. The batteries store power generated by the station's solar arrays to provide power to the station when the station is not in the sunlight, as it orbits the Earth during orbital night.
NASA further said that In addition, the astronaut duo also removed debris from outside of the station, securing a tieback for restraints on the Solar Array Blanket Box.
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McClain will again take a spacewalk on March 29 along with flight engineer Christina Koch to work on the second set of battery replacements on a different power channel in the same area of the ISS. This would be the first-ever spacewalk with all-female spacewalkers.
The third spacewalk on April 8 by Hague and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency will lay out jumper cables between the Unity module and the S0 truss, at the midpoint of the Indian Space Centre's backbone.