This combination of images provided by NASA shows the inflation of a new experimental room at the International Space Station on Saturday, May 28, 2016.
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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.
Williams experienced a problem with an earpiece in his suit near the end of Friday s outing, briefly interfering with his ability to hear mission control, but NASA said the issue was not serious.
The spacewalk was scheduled to take about 6.5 hours.
During the last United States spacewalk on January 15, a problem with American Tim Kopra s spacesuit allowed a small amount of water to build up inside his helmet by the end of the outing.
The International Space Station is a pure research lab that has been orbiting Earth since 2005.
“Commercial crew flights from Florida’s Space Coast to the International Space Station will restore America’s human launch capability and increase the time USA crews can dedicate to scientific research, which is helping prepare astronauts for deep space missions, including the journey to Mars”, NASA spokesman Mark Garcia said in a statement. SpaceX and Boeing expect to resume human launches from Cape Canaveral in another year or two. Could the future of space travel revolve around private aerospace companies like SpaceX? Boeing, which built the adaptor, plans to send its CST-100 Starliner on its debut flight in 2018, with a return somewhere in the Southwestern US desert.
NASA started using private US companies to carry out cargo shipments a few years back.
The addition is part of a move to hand off space station duties to private companies, allowing NASA to focus its resources on bigger projects like getting to Mars. NASA program manager Shaun Kelley stated his belief that the new interface standard will “stimulate competition and stimulate technology”.
A replacement docking port is under construction and expected to be delivered to the station in early 2018.
SpaceX has already completed nine resupply mission to the ISS, but CEO Elon Musk seems more intent on colonizing Mars than building more space stations. Williams will conduct one more spacewalk with Rubins on September 1 to retract a radiator.
The spacewalk was the fourth for Williams, a veteran astronaut who on Wednesday will surpass U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly s record for the most cumulative days in space for an American. These test flights – meant to go all the way to the space station and dock – will last about two weeks.
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“We can’t tell you exactly what month this launch is going to be”, Behnken said during a visit to Kennedy Space Center.
