Current three-person Soyuz crews usually alternate between two cosmonauts and one NASA astronaut and one cosmonaut, one NASA astronaut and one other crew member from ESA or Japan’s JAXA.
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Americans Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins switched their spacesuits to internal battery power at 8:04 (1204 GMT) and floated outside the orbiting laboratory to begin the work of attaching the first of two worldwide docking adaptors.
Late next year, if all goes to plan, SpaceX and Boeing will begin sending American astronauts up to the International Space Station, ending Russia’s monopoly on the ticket to orbit.
Jeff Williams and Kate Rubins from the U.S. space agency NASA concluded their spacewalk at 2:02 p.m. EDT (1802 GMT) after spending almost six hours installing the ring-like equipment, known as an global docking adapter (IDA). It was the first spacewalk for Rubins and the fourth for Williams.
NASA believes the new docking port at the space station is the “gateway to a future” that will allow a new generation of American spacecraft to lift astronauts to space. The adapter will work with Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon. “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”.
Williams, who is now the Station Commander of the six-member crew, has performed a spacewalk four times in his career, while Rubins, who is the flight engineer, experienced the spacewalk for the first time.
With more private spaceship traffic expected at the International Space Station (ISS) in the coming years, two United States astronauts are set to embark on a spacewalk Friday to install a special parking spot for them.
SpaceX is shooting for a launch of its supped-up Dragon with two astronauts as early as a year from now.
This is actually the second adapter to be launched to the ISS; the first was lost in 2015 when a SpaceX rocket carrying a load of cargo to the station exploded mid-flight. In fact, CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk appears to be more interested to making it to planet Mars than building more commercial space stations.
“We have to be very careful about putting loads into the SPDM”, Glenda Brown, lead spacewalk officer, said at a news conference.
“That will allow NASA to boost the station’s crew from six to seven, greatly expanding the time available for research”, he adds.
The port is delicate as it has the automatic parking system instead of grapple and berthing which is carried out by astronauts.
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On Wednesday, the ground robotics team will command the robotic Canadarm2 with the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (Dextre) robotic “hand” attached to the end of the arm.
