NASA astronauts conducted another spacewalk that lasted nearly seven hours

U.S. astronauts Victor Glover, who has a red stripe on his spacesuit, and Mike Hopkins leave the Quest airlock on the International Space Station March 13 for a nearly seven-hour spacewalk to perform various maintenance tasks.

NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover conducted a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Saturday (March 13) to upgrade communications and cooling systems. The walk took place about 250 miles from Earth and lasted 6 hours and 47 minutes.

Hopkins managed to insert and secure three of the four cables needed for the European experiment platform during the challenging spacewalk, CBS News reported.

Hopkins and Glover also drained residual ammonia coolant from two jumpers used for the service station’s thermal control system and stored the hoses in a different location for future use.

“Extra vigilance was required when handling the ammonia because of concerns that the chemical suits were contaminated with ammonia, which was carried into the station with the suits and could create a potentially toxic gas environment for the astronauts and the station,” said Chris Edelen, spacewalk flight director, earlier.

NASA concluded that the pair successfully evacuated early ammonia, relocated a jumper cable and serviced the Bartolomeo science payload platform outside the Columbus Experiment Module, including routing three of four cables on the payload position (PAPOS) interface and configuring cables for the radio system. However, the astronauts postponed the task of installing clamps on Bartolomeo to wire the HD cameras.

The pair also replaced the wireless antenna assembly on the Unity module and installed hardware to provide additional structural integrity on the airlock.

U.S. astronautical engineers Mike Hopkins (right) and Victor Glover (left).

This is the 237th spacewalk on the International Space Station since its inception in 1998 and the fifth U.S. spacewalk in 2021.

For both U.S. astronauts, it was Hopkins’ fifth spacewalk in his career and Glover’s fourth. To date, Hopkins has accumulated a total of 32 hours and one minute of spacewalk Time. Glover, on the other hand, has accumulated 26 hours and seven minutes.

Since December 1998, the astronauts have conducted 237 spacewalks on the International Space Station. March 13 marks the fifth spacewalk in 2021. The picture shows the statistical record of 236 walks before March 13.