'New Port of Call' Installed at Space Station 19 August 2016

'New port of call' installed at space station 19 August 2016

With more private spaceship traffic expected at the The second docking adaptor is expected to be International Space Station in the coming years, launched in late 2017, Navias said. two spacewalking US astronauts installed a special parking spot for them on Friday. ISS operations integration manager Kenneth Todd called Friday's installation a "very significant Americans Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins floated milestone on the path to establishing commercial outside the orbiting laboratory for a spacewalk crew capability." lasting five hours and 58 minutes to attach the first of two international docking adaptors. Built by Boeing, the circular adaptor measures around 42 inches (one meter) tall and about 63 The astronauts spent more than two hours tying inches wide. down the adaptor, after which robotic machinery at the space station completed the hard mate, The adaptors will work with Boeing's CST-100 making the attachment permanent. Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon, two spaceships under construction that are planned to "With that, we have a new port of call," NASA ferry astronauts to the space station. commentator Rob Navias said as the space station flew over Singapore at 10:40 am (1440 GMT). The docking adaptor is more sophisticated than past equipment because it will allow automatic During the rest of the spacewalk, astronauts parking instead of the current grapple and berthing connected power and data cables for the adaptor. process, which is managed by astronauts.

The fittings will enable the space station to share Spacewalk Sept 1 power and data with visiting spaceships. During the last US spacewalk on January 15, a The spacewalk was the fourth for Williams, a problem with American Tim Kopra's spacesuit veteran astronaut who on Wednesday will surpass allowed a small amount of water to build up inside US astronaut Scott Kelly's record for the most his helmet by the end of the outing. cumulative days in space for an American. It was the latest in a series of spacesuit issues, but Kelly has 520 days in space over his career. not as severe as an emergency in 2013 when Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet flooded, Williams will have 534 days in space by the time forcing him to end his spacewalk early. he wraps up his stint at the ISS and returns to Earth in early September. Williams experienced a problem with an earpiece in his suit near the end of Friday's outing, briefly The spacewalk was Rubins's first. She is the 12th interfering with his ability to hear mission control, woman to walk in space. but NASA said the issue was not serious.

'Gateway to future' The US space agency is planning another spacewalk on September 1 to retract one of the NASA describes the docking adaptor as a thermal radiators outside the space station. "metaphorical gateway to a future" that will allow a new generation of US spacecraft—the first since theAstronauts unsuccessfully tried to push it back into space shuttle program ended in 2011—to carry position last year. astronauts to the space station.

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