spacetoday.net: Astronauts begin swap of space station batteries in spacewalk

Posted: Sun, Jun 28, 2020, 7:19 PM ET (2319 GMT)
ISS EVA on 2020 June 26 (NASA)

Two NASA astronauts spent a little more than six hours outside the International Space Station Friday beginning a final series of battery replacements. Bob Behnken and Chris Cassidy started the six-hour, seven-minute spacewalk at 7:32 am EDT (1132 GMT) and quickly moved their assigned tasks to replace existing nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion ones. The two got through all their planned tasks for the initial spacewalk and started tasks planned for a second spacewalk. The spacewalk is the first in a series of at least four NASA plans to carry out through July to complete the replacement of batteries used in the station's power system, an effort that started in 2017. NASA is taking advantage of the additional crew on the station during the Demo-2 commercial crew mission to perform the spacewalk; Behnken, one of the two astronauts who arrived on the station nearly a month earlier on that Crew Dragon spacecraft, has extensive spacewalking experience, as does Cassidy.