Americans Jeff Williams, 58, and Kate Rubins, 37, officially began their expedition in the interstellar void to 24:00 GMT when they activated the internal power supply of their spacesuit.
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Their job is to hook up a docking port that will be used by future commercial crew capsules.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) Astronauts ventured out on a spacewalk Friday to install a new door for visitors at the International Space Station.
Now, it’s up to space-walkers Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins to install the port – and connect power cables and sensors.
According to NASA, the new adaptors will work with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner, both of which are still under construction and are expected to ferry astronauts to the space station. “Billed as a cost-cutter, the suggestion is partly a response by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos to how commercial space travel is changing the space exploration landscape”.
Since NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011, the Russians have provided all crew transport to and from the ISS.
NASA says it wants to eventually hand over the International Space Station for commercial research. Another of the worldwide docking adapters (IDA) is planned to be launched in late 2017.
NASA astronauts this week began installing a docking adaptor on ISS that will facilitate crew arrivals from future commercial spacecraft operated by Boeing and SpaceX.
“The adapter represents the first on-orbit element built to the docking measurements that are standardized for all the spacecraft builders across the world”, NASA states.
The installation of the IDA means the space station will be able to accommodate various space taxis, including SpaceX and Boeing vehicles.
It is “a significant milestone in NASA’s work to return crew launches to USA soil”, the agency said in a statement.
Before that can happen, however, the space station has to have a “parking spot” for all upcoming commercial spaceships. These ports will work as parking places for the private space crafts that are expected on ISS soon.
“It’s really opening up a new era for commercial crew support to ISS”, said Mark Ortiz, Boeing’s project manager for the two IDAs.
The successful spacewalk occurred a day after a key leader at NASA announced the space agency was looking to hand off control of the ISS to a private company within the next decade. Williams, who is set to outdo Scott Kelly’s record for the most total cumulative time spent in space by an American with a total of 534 days, is to return home on September 6, along with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin.
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The space station is already living on borrowed time. “Right now, our robots on Mars are doing fantastic things and have covered more than a marathon distance of the Martian surface, but humans could accomplish a lot more because of our ability to react much more quickly”. Please see our terms of service for more information. “But barring any large unforeseen issues we can make it”.
