Indian origin Sunita Williams did spacewalk after 12 years

Indian origin Sunita Williams did spacewalk after 12 years




New Delhi:

Indian-origin NASA astronaut Sunita Williams on Thursday stepped out of the International Space Station (ISS) for a spacewalk with her colleague Nick Hague, the US space agency said.

It is Ms Williams’ first spacewalk in 12 years and the eighth of her career, while Hague’s fourth. The mission, designated US Spacewalk 91, is expected to last about six and a half hours.

Mr. Hague serves as Spacewalk Crew Member 1 and is wearing a suit with red stripes. Ms. Williams is serving as Spacewalk Crew Member 2 and is wearing a suit without markings.

NASA said the astronaut-pair is currently working to perform maintenance work and replace hardware.

“NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Suni Williams are stepping outside the space_station to support station upgrades, including repairs to our NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer) X-ray telescope.

In a blog post, NASA explained that Ms. Williams and Hague will work to replace a rate gyro assembly that helps provide orientation control for the station and to patch damaged areas of the light filter for NICER. Establishes. They will also replace the reflector device used for navigational data on one of the international docking adapters.

Additionally, the pair will examine access areas and connector tools that will be used for future maintenance work on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

NASA also gave information about the second spacewalk, which is scheduled to begin at 8:15 am on January 23.

During the second mission, Mr. Wilmore and Ms. Williams will remove a radio frequency group antenna assembly from the station’s trusses, and collect samples of surface material for analysis from the Destiny laboratory and the Quest airlock to see if microorganisms can colonize the exterior. May be present in. orbital complex.

They will also fabricate a spare elbow joint for the Canadarm2 robotic arm in case a replacement is needed.

Meanwhile, NASA has once again delayed the mission to return Ms Williams and Wilmore to Earth, as the launch of SpaceX Crew 10 has been delayed to late March 2025.

Ms Williams and Mr Wilmore became the first people to ride the Starliner, developed by Boeing. What started as an eight-day stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has now extended to 10 months in space for astronauts, while the faulty Starliner declared unfit for human travel by NASA returns to Earth unharmed. Is back.

The astronauts were scheduled to return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule in February 2025.

However, NASA chose to delay Crew 10 to allow additional preparation time for the new SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, in order to increase astronaut safety.

Recently, Ms Williams said she “wanted to go home because we left our families a while ago, but we have a lot to do while we’re here”.



(TagstoTranslate)Sunita Williams(T)International Space Station(T)Spacewalk