Preparations for a spacewalk are high on the Expedition 70 crew's schedule on Monday, October 23, with two Roscosmos astronauts preparing to depart the space station on Wednesday, October 25, and two NASA astronauts looking forward to their first spacewalk next week.
The Canadarm2 robotic arm extends from the International Space Station and orbits 261 miles above Türkiye. Pictured below is the Sinai Peninsula, the Red Sea and the Nile Delta, leading to the Mediterranean Sea. Image source: NASA
On Wednesday at 2:10 p.m. ET, flight engineers Oleg Kononenko and Nikolai Chub will venture out of the International Space Station's Poisk module to install communications hardware, deploy a microsatellite and inspect an external backup radiator for a coolant leak. The pair worked together today to prepare the tools they will use during the seven-hour trip and to install lights and cameras on the helmets of the Oran spacesuits they will wear.
The picture shows NASA astronaut and Expedition 70 flight engineer Loral O'Hara trying on a spacesuit and testing its components in the exploration airlock of the International Space Station in preparation for the upcoming spacewalk. Image source: NASA
NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara worked together today to prepare for next week's first spacewalk. The two will leave the space station at 8:05 a.m. next Monday to remove the radio frequency stack, an electronic equipment box, and replace the bearing assembly of the solar array's rotating joint. Today, their preparations focus on procedural review and will continue to intensify throughout the remainder of the week. In the evening, they were joined by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) flight engineer Satoshi Furukawa and European Space Agency (ESA) commander Andreas Mogensen for a ground team meeting.
On the research front, last month space station crews witnessed the final harvest of Arabidopsis thaliana plants from Plant Habitat-03. This research aims to understand how one generation of plants passes on adaptations to the next in the challenging conditions of microgravity. Today, Commander Mogensen organized the facility and prepared the seed bags for their return to Earth. Furukawa, meanwhile, was responsible for replacing filter components in the system that treats wastewater.
While most space station residents were focused on preparations and procedural reviews for the upcoming spacewalk, Roscosmos flight engineer Konstantin Borisov completed maintenance tasks and conducted an experiment to evaluate how Earth's atmosphere glows in near-ultraviolet light at night.