Pesquet will be extravehicular crew member 1 (EV 1), with red stripes on his spacesuit, while Kimbrough will be extravehicular crew member 2 (EV 2), with an unmarked suit. This will be the 239th spacewalk in support of space station assembly. The first pair of solar arrays were deployed in December 2000 and have been powering the station for more than 20 years. The new solar arrays will augment the existing arrays, which are functioning well but have begun to show signs of expected degradation as they have operated beyond their designed 15-year service life. On Sunday, June 20, Kimbrough and Pesquet will install the second array to upgrade the 4B power channel on the P6 truss. On June 10, operators in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center used the station’s robotic Canadarm2 to extract the solar arrays from Dragon’s trunk in preparation for the installation. Two of the new solar arrays arrived at the station in the SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft as part of the company’s 22nd commercial resupply services mission to the station. EDT, with the crew members scheduled to set their spacesuits to battery power about 8 a.m., signifying the start of their spacewalk.ĭuring the planned six-and-a-half hour spacewalk, Kimbrough and Pesquet will work on the far end of the left (port) side of the station’s backbone truss structure (P6) to upgrade the 2B power channel with the installation and deployment of an ISS Roll-Out Solar Array (iROSAs). Live coverage of the spacewalk will air on NASA Television, the agency’s website, and the NASA app beginning June 16 at 6:30 a.m. NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough and ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Thomas Pesquet are scheduled to exit the International Space Station’s Quest airlock Wednesday for a spacewalk to install and deploy the first of six new solar arrays to help power the orbiting laboratory. “The six IROSAs installed on the ISS are innovative examples to support further utilization with technologies and systems that were not envisioned when the ISS was designed and built,” said John Mulholland, Boeing vice president and program manager for the ISS, in the statement.Expedition 65 Flight Engineers Megan McArthur and Mark Vande Hei support astronauts Thomas Pesquet (left) and Shane Kimbrough (right) as they test their U.S. “We are proud of the successful deployment of six IROSAs on the ISS to date, making it the gold standard for large-scale power generation with proven flight heritage,” said Peter Cannito, chief executive of Redwire, in a statement. It saw the award as a validation of its overall ROSA technology, which was also used on NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test planetary defense spacecraft and will be incorporated on the Power and Propulsion Element for the lunar Gateway. Redwire did not disclose the value of its contract with Boeing to provide the arrays. He said the contract modification for the new arrays was valued at a little more than $35 million. Those arrays would be delivered to the station in late 2025 or early 2026. In a June 30 statement, NASA spokesperson Josh Finch said NASA and Boeing, the ISS prime contractor, “have a plan in place” for the fourth IROSA pair. “We do have plans in place to try and build a fourth set of arrays, funding notwithstanding.” “The ability to bring our power up to normal levels and even a little higher for future research is really critical for the space station.”Īt that briefing, she said there was interest in installing a fourth IROSA pair. “The ability to augment that power is really important for us,” said Dina Contella, NASA ISS operations integration manager, during a June 1 briefing to preview those spacewalks. Each array generates more than 20 kilowatts of power. The IROSA are installed on top of arrays, partially shadowing them but providing a net increase in power. The new arrays are designed to augment the station’s original solar arrays, which have degraded over the years. NASA astronauts Steve Bowen and Woody Hoburg installed them on two spacewalks June 9 and 15. The third, and originally final, pair of IROSA arrays arrived at the station in early June on a SpaceX cargo Dragon spacecraft. The companies had previously partnered on six IROSA arrays installed on the station starting in 2021. Redwire developed the array technology, known as ROSA, which uses solar arrays that are launched in a rolled-up form factor and then extend once in space. WASHINGTON - After completing an upgrade to the International Space Station’s power system in June, NASA is moving ahead with plans to add two more solar arrays to the station.īoeing and Redwire announced June 28 that they signed a contract for a fourth pair of ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays, or IROSA, for the station.
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