Critical Battery Failure at International Spacestation
Written by Jeff Ramella on October 22, 2019
By Pete Zezas
Critical Battery Failure at International Spacestation
1st All-female spacewalk must be moved up to save the day
The first women-only spacewalk will now take place on Thursday or Friday rather than the following Monday. In more than half a century of spacewalking this will be a first for a trip specially reserved for Christina Koch and Jessica Meir.
Originally, the women were meant to conduct a spacewalk to replace old batteries for the station’s solar power network. Now, they will be going out to fix the broken components of the system.
Two spacewalks occurred last week to replace old batteries in the solar network and 3 more must happen before they are finished. The next walk was meant to be this Wednesday, but that is put off for now.
Each lithium-ion battery requires a regulator with it so the battery does not take in or release too much energy. After the two previous spacewalks, one of the three batteries’ regulators did not kick in, which means it must be restored or changed.
Officials say, the job is relatively generic and all potential spacewalkers are trained to the task. Astronaut Anne McClain tweeted, “Very good that we have 4 expert spacewalkers on board to shoulder this tough task. They are the A-team!”
The science operations going on and the six people already occupied in the orbiting lab remain unaffected by this according to NASA.
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